


finger on the trigger/pedal to the floor

by badacts, lightning_struck



Series: spies and traitors [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Big Bang 2018, Alternate Universe, Government Agencies, Government Conspiracy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:43:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightning_struck/pseuds/lightning_struck
Summary: Neil and Kevin, operatives for the highly secretive US body known only as ‘the Agency’, are very good at their jobs. Maybe Neil isn’t the patriot that Kevin is, but he can recognise the need for people like him, and, if nothing else, he is loyal. However, in the wake of an assassination attempt on the president foiled with the help of talented-but-civilian sniper Andrew Minyard, of the chipped shoulder and the uncanny knack for seeing right through people, Neil begins to question who it is giving him orders.However, asking questions is a dangerous game. If Neil isn’t careful, he’ll end up dead - or worse than.





	1. CROSSFIRE

**Author's Note:**

> 2018 BIG BANG!!!!
> 
> This is the project that I worked on in conjunction with the lovely Lio (lightning_struck) whose SUPER BADASS AND AMAZING art you can find in the first chapter or [here on tumblr](http://lio-zehel.tumblr.com/post/177864887500/it-was-such-a-pleasure-to-work-with-bee-badacts).
> 
> A huge thanks to [Al](http://lailadermott.co.vu/) for the last minute beta-ing, I'm a terrible procrastinator and she REALLY stepped up to the plate for me.
> 
> Content warnings for this fic - it's more or less on the line with canon in terms of violence, perhaps less so. However, torture is a major facet of the plot in various iterations, though none of it is graphic. You can hit me up on tumblr if you're unsure and I can tell you more!!

****

 

There are some people who should never ignore their cellphones. Doctors, for example. Parents when their kids call, Neil assumes, seeing as he certainly doesn’t have children.

He’s another kind. When his phone goes off unexpectedly, it usually means someone is about to die. The only distinction is whether he’s on the side of the rescuers or the ones doing the killing.

He’s in the middle of microwaving another shitty heat-and-eat meal when his phone chirps on the kitchen bench. He’s not surprised that it’s Kevin on the other end.

“Turn on the news,” he says, voice clipped close.

Neil does as he says. The screen, when it comes to life, is red everywhere with scrolling banners. It’s a surprise - usually Neil is pulled in before the news makes it onto television. When he focuses on the words and the story, he feels an uncharacteristic moment of actual shock.

“What are our orders?” he asks.

“I haven’t asked,” is the reply. “Get him on the way here.”

He hangs up. It’s lucky he’s predictable and also that Neil knows him well, because otherwise Neil could pick up any ostensibly male person on the way over. A year ago he might have done it anyway just to prove a point, but he’s trying to move on from pettiness. At least, he is when it comes to Kevin.

The microwave beeps to indicate it’s done. On the television, a serious blonde woman talks about a classroom of school kids being held hostage, and of the sniper keeping the authorities back. Neil is already wearing his boots and halfway out the door.

When the person about to die is the president, it pays to move fast.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t even have to go all the way to the apartment. A mile and a half down the road from the building he spots a familiar figure sauntering down the sidewalk and pulls up alongside, winding his window down. It’s bracingly cold out, the air stinging his eyes.

The man on the sidewalk doesn’t even look up. “Fuck off.”

“Friendly as ever,” Neil says, and gets to experience the delight of seeing Andrew Minyard actually stiffen in surprise. “Get in.”

Andrew turns on him. He looks the same as he always does, dressed in jeans and heavy boots and a coat, all of them black, and his head bare. “What do you want?”

“What do you think I want?” Neil asks, because it’s not as though he and Andrew spend time socialising. Their meetings have always had one purpose only. “Come on. Kevin’s waiting.”

Whether it’s the use of Kevin’s name or something else that galvanises Andrew, Neil will never know. Either way, he steps up and opens the door, dropping himself into the front seat of Neil’s car. Neil wastes no time in pulling out into the flow of traffic.

“This is a boring car for a spy,” Andrew notes, examining the interior. Neil has no idea what he sees - he doesn’t know anything about cars.

“Put on your seatbelt,” Neil tells him, “And I’m not a spy.” It’s not even a lie.

“Secret agent,” Andrew corrects himself, still incorrect, mostly mocking in that flat way of his. “Where are we going?”

“Helen Hoben Elementary School,” Neil says. “Put your seatbelt on.”

“Does Kevin want me to kill a child now?” Andrew asks. “Why?

“No, and because wearing a seatbelt is proven to save lives in a crash,” Neil deliberately misconstrues.

“Everyone has to die of something,” Andrew says, though there’s the click of his seatbelt clasping a second later. “Why, Secret Agent Man?”

“Because someone is holding the president and a classroom of kids hostage,” Neil replies. “You now know as much as I do.”

“Interesting,” Andrew says after a moment. It’s not clear whether he means the situation or Neil’s lack of knowledge on said situation. Either way, ‘interesting’ is the magic word - Andrew, for all of his skill, isn’t much use at all unless his attention is caught. “It’s the middle of the day.”

It seems like a non-sequitur. It’s actually 2pm and the statement is therefore only arguably true. It’s irrelevant, anyway - Andrew means in comparison to the other times Kevin - and Neil, by association - have dragged him into their world.

Neil has never felt guilty involving civilians in the messes his job causes. The truth of the world is that every person is only a slip or a word from falling headfirst into his kind of trouble without Neil’s involvement at all. People are far less removed from people traffickers and drug lords and murderers than they ever believe. For Andrew, who works in a shitty bar with his drug-dealing brother and petty criminal cousin, the distance is microscopic. Non-existent.

At least this way, he’s on the side of the angels. It’s better than what he does the rest of the time.

“It’s important,” Neil says, stating the obvious.

“Oh, is it? There will always be another politician, you know.”

“Tell that to Kevin.”

“What’s your personal stake in this, then?” Andrew asks. “Colluding with your partner on an unsanctioned operation, and dragging in a civilian - how is that going to read on your report?”

Andrew looks like a dumb thug, but he really isn’t one. Neil probably shouldn’t still be surprised by that. “If you want to talk paperwork, sign on,” Neil recommends. “You could be useful.”

“No I wouldn’t be,” Andrew replies with total confidence. “And you wouldn’t want that anyway.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be useful?”

“You wouldn’t want me to join your special secret club.”

“I think you’d be good at it,” Neil says. “I think you’re wasting your life pouring drinks for wasted teenagers with fake IDs, and I know that you know it.”

“Waste is relative,” Andrew says. “Also, you are being evasive. How are you still alive when you’re this bad at it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Kevin wants me to sign on. You don’t. Which is interesting, because you really do think that I would be good at it,” Andrew says. “One day I’m going to figure that contradiction out.”

Neil has no doubt about that. Thankfully they’re pulling up at the tail of a queue of cars, probably most of them owned by frantic parents, barely held at bay by a police cordon. He puts on his hazards and turns the engine off, leaving the keys in the ignition. There’s nothing in the vehicle worth stealing, and it’s covered in trackers anyway.

“Come on,” he says as he climbs out of the car. It’s easy enough to spot Kevin even across the crowd thanks to his height, and with his terribly-affected casual lean against someone else’s car. His skillset is vast, but it doesn’t extend to subterfuge. That’s what Neil is for.

Neil doesn’t approach, instead tapping at his ear while running his fingers through his hair. “You look like you’re loitering. And that cordon is too close.”

“He’s not aiming for civilian casualties,” comes Kevin’s reply through the earpiece. “Just first responders.”

Andrew is at Neil’s side, head tilted like he can hear Kevin’s words. His face is still, but his eyes aren’t. Neil says to him, “The skyrise. See?” It’s all mirrored glass except where the windows have been blown out from the inside.

“I see it,” Andrew replies boredly. He holds out his hand to Neil, and Neil offers him the tiny spare earpiece communicator he keeps in his pocket. R&D would kill him if they knew he stored it there, but they’d have to join the queue.

Kevin continues, “Team of three hostage-takers inside the building. Their leader has made contact, said not to bother trying to take out his guy via the building, that there’s a bomb rigged up, but there’s nowhere decent to get a shot at him from outside.”

“I suppose I’ll leave then,” Andrew says, voice doubling in Neil’s ears through the earpiece, and makes to do exactly that. There’s no question of how he plans to get home - he would take Neil’s car in a heartbeat.

Neil waylays him with a hand clutched in his coat as Kevin says, “Let me rephrase that. There’s nowhere for anyone other than you to get a shot at him.”

“Mm, flattery,” Andrew says, and doesn’t try to cut Neil’s fingers off.

“No, but I’m not above bribery,” Kevin says. “Trunk of my car. It’s unlocked.”

Neil couldn’t pick Kevin’s car out of a lineup, but apparently Andrew can. He approaches a black sedan amongst dozens that look exactly like it, popping the trunk and then unlatching the case inside it.

“Terrible bribe. Booze would be better,” Andrew notes.

“Maybe a few years ago.”

Andrew ignores this interjection entirely. “I’m not allowed one of these anyway.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Kevin replies.

“I thought that was a military thing,” Andrew comments, which Neil doesn’t understand. “I need roof access.”

Kevin and Neil exchange a glance, which says from Neil _he’s your asset_ and from Kevin _I’m your superior_. Eventually Neil says, “I’ve got it.”

What he has is a penchant for pickpocketing master swipe cards, a good set of lockpicks, and a decent kick if locks prove stubborn - oh, and his authorised option, an official-looking badge. “Which roof?”

Andrew picks up the rifle case, slams the trunk shut, and turns away without a word. His hand rises to his ear and turns the earpiece off so Kevin can’t get another word in. Neil doesn’t pause longer than a moment before following.

They’re in the inner city, though the school grounds are a large lower-height space in the landscape. Andrew leads them along a side street outside of the school, then towards a taller building a block back.

“You’ll need to do your lying thing,” Andrew says, letting Neil fall into step with him. Neil doesn’t reply because he doesn’t take orders from civilians, but he does flash his badge at the staff on the bottom floor of Andrew’s building and get them a key and directions to the roof.

They take the elevator as high as they can, come out and down a hall, and then swipe themselves into a much less elegant set of stairs. Three flights up, Neil lets them out into the light.

Down on street level it’s not windy at all, but up here it’s buffeting and brutally cold. Andrew ignores this, stepping up to the edge of the building before kneeling and opening the rifle case.

“Get down,” he tells Neil without looking at him. Neil is back by the door, content to guard the sole entry point onto the roof.

“He can’t get me from here,” Neil replies.

“Hasn’t your life not taught you to underestimate people with guns yet?” Andrew’s hands are art with the rifle, assembling it like it’s been minutes and not months since he last did it. It’s a Remington M2010 with a specialist scope, starkly brutalist and perfectly suited to Andrew.

Neil has been shot three times in his life. Mostly all it’s taught him is that he’s harder to kill than he looks. Sometimes he’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or not. “I didn’t realise you cared that much.”

“I didn’t walk up three flights of stairs to have you give away my position,” Andrew says, and Neil slides back towards the shadows of the doorway in acquiescence, though not without rolling his eyes.

Andrew drops the rifle down in position, using the lip of the roof as a rest for the muzzle, and then lays prone with it. It’s hardly the first time Neil has seen him do it, but it’s still a little strange to see his back so unguarded. Neil has slit the throats of snipers in that position, silent as as ghost. Andrew is a steel trap, but he looks as vulnerable as anyone else on his belly.

“Long shot,” Neil observes, because it’s true. They must be at least 1500 yards out from here and on an upwards angle. All Neil can make out from here is the shape of the busted windows, dark holes against the entire reflective panes of glass.

“Be quiet,” Andrew says. His breathing has slowed right down. For someone with a file basically red-stamped with the phrase ‘out of control’, he looks nothing like that in this moment. No dead-eyed, smart-mouthed bartender to be found. “Tell your keeper I’m ready.”

Neil taps the headpiece in his ear, bringing it to life. “Day?”

“Copy,” comes Kevin’s curt voice.

“We’re in position.”

“Fire at will. The sooner the better. Cops are getting panicky.”

“Roger that,” Neil replies, and then says to Andrew, “He says ‘don’t miss’.”

“For fu-” Kevin says in his ear, right before he’s cut off by the sound of Andrew’s weapon. Andrew’s body jolts with the force of it and Neil flinches at the sheer volume.

An instant later, Andrew kneels up and starts disassembling the rifle just as quickly as he put it together. Neil says, “Did you make the shot?”

Andrew half-turns, tossing the scope to Neil. He puts it to his eye and focuses on the building, on the broken windows. He can just make out the off-kilter position of a rifle, like it’s been knocked aside.

“Get some more pigs to run out into the street and you’ll find out,” Andrew recommends, clipping the case shut. He stands with it, walking back to Neil and depositing it at Neil’s side, then removes the earpiece and sets it on top. Without another word he pushes through the door back inside and leaves.

“Josten,” Kevin says in his ear, impatient as ever.

“Sniper down,” Neil replies. “I’m on the move.” He gathers the rifle case himself and starts the same path back down to ground level. He can hear Andrew’s footsteps below but can’t see him. “What’s the situation on the ground?”

“They heard the shot but they haven’t realised the sniper is down,” Kevin says, voice steady but with a tinge of frustration. As ever, he expects the impossible of everyone around him. “I need to-”

“Maintain position,” Neil says, because Kevin is technically in charge here but that’s never meant much between the two of them. “This is why they invented phones.”

He pulls his from his pocket, flicking through the contacts and then raising it ringing to his ear. It takes a bit for it to be answered, but he’s not surprised when it is.

“Knox,” comes from the other end, terse. Like the guy is in the middle of a hostage situation. He’s generally pretty cheery, but apparently the potential death of school kids is enough to make him grim.

“It’s Neil Josten. Your sniper’s out of commission.”

There’s a pause, presumably while Jeremy looks at his phone to check the caller ID. Like someone else is going to be out here impersonating a nobody to fuck with the SWAT team. “How?”

“The old-fashioned way,” Neil provides. “Factor it into your plans. You’re on your own with the rest of them. That’s your speciality, anyway.”

“I’ll send you flowers later,” Jeremy replies, and then hangs up.

“Knox has been notified,” Neil provides to Kevin, though he’s probably already guessed as much. “We’re out.”

“We could-”

“If you want to get clearance for ground involvement from on high, go ahead, but it’s going to be hard enough to pretend you didn’t pull in a civilian without that,” Neil replies. “This isn’t our job, remember?”

“Everything is our job,” Kevin mutters, because that’s the kind of man he is - as much as he expects the impossible from everyone else, he expects even more from himself. If he could save the world single-handedly, he would, no hesitation. It’s the way he can’t do that - sometimes can’t save anyone at all - that frustrates him.

“It’s Knox’s, and he’s good at it,” Neil reminds him. “We need to make ourselves scarce.”

There’s a pause, and then Kevin says, “I’m clearing the area.”

“Copy that,” Neil replies, still backtracking along the street. An ambulance is driving in the opposite direction to him, lights flashing. The sniper being downed means evacuations can start from the wrong side of the cordon, for those that have stayed alive and pinned down this long. It’ll be longer before the situation dies down, but the school is all windows - if SWAT keeps any snipers on worth their wage, then the hostage situation will be over soon enough.

It’s then Neil remembers that he left his keys in his car, and that somehow he doubts Andrew would have taken the subway.

“Hold up. I’m going to need a ride,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Director Moriyama calls Neil in the next morning. He isn’t exactly surprised.

Actually going into ‘the Office’ - Agency HQ - isn’t something he does often. For the most part, the building is a front - highly secure but only home to training facilities, junior agents and intelligence. Senior agents largely only stop by when necessary. The last time Neil was here, he’d needed treatment for a wound he’d stitched in the field with dental floss. The smell of mint and pus is a distinct one, it turns out.

He uses cinnamon toothpaste now.

He’s waved straight through to the Director’s office by the secretary who has a gun under her desk. The interior of the Office is starkly minimalist in the way that most real office buildings aspire to and miss completely. Neil hates it.

“Agent Josten,” the Director greets, without looking up from his desk. “Take a seat.”

Neil is slightly surprised that Kevin is isn’t the room, but he doesn’t show it. “Director.” He sits on the other side of the desk, pretending as though the chair isn’t the most uncomfortable thing in existence. It’s easy - half of his job is being in the wrong place, often in far more discomfort, and looking exactly like he’s meant to be there.

The silence stretches. The Director is a very patient man, and he uses it like a weapon. Neil has seen junior agents crack under the technique and lay their sins bare in a rush, but he just waits it out.

Eventually, the Director puts his pen down and pushes the file aside. “I expected a report from you on the events of yesterday.”

“Any actions I took were done without orders, and in an unofficial capacity,” Neil says.

“As a senior agent, all of your actions are considered to be official.”

Neil manfully doesn’t ask whether the Agency will be requiring a report on his next trip to the grocery store. “Of course, sir. I can provide you a verbal report now, if that would suffice.”

“That is why I called you in,” the Director says.

Neil reports. His recitation skills are decent, though his tone is monotonous. He’s relatively honest, too. The only thing he doesn’t mention is Andrew Minyard.

Once he’s done, the Director gives him a long, inscrutable look. “None of your scores on the range nor your previous mission results would have predicted that you would be able to hit a target under those conditions.”

Neil is decent with a sniper rifle, but he couldn’t have made that shot in his wildest dreams. He also didn’t say that he was the one to make the shot, but an omission is sometimes more effective than a lie. He says, “Desperation. It makes the impossible possible sometimes. Like those mothers that get impossible strength when their children are in danger.”

“I wasn’t aware that your devotion to the president was so strong,” the Director notes.

It’s not a question, so Neil says nothing. After a moment, the Director says, “Thank you, Agent Josten. I’ll ensure that your skills are reflected in your future assignments.”

“Thank you, sir,” Neil says, thinking that he will need to put in some time on the range in the near future if he wants to hold onto this lie for longer than a few days. Taking the words as dismissal, Neil stands to leave.

He’s halfway to the door when the Director says, “Andrew Minyard.”

Neil stops, turns back. “Who, sir?”

The Director stares at him for an unending moment, expression utterly inscrutable. Then he says, “Be careful of who you associate with, Nathaniel. Not everyone is as they seem. You are in a position of power now, and you need to be careful that other people don’t try to use that.”

“Of course,” Neil replies, gracefully ignoring the use of that particular name. He knows a warning when he hears one.

The second he steps out of the Office, his phone starts to vibrate in his pocket. He’s not an idiot, which means he doesn’t look around to find where his observer is.

“Hello,” he says, and is utterly unsurprised when Kevin demands from the other end, “What did you tell him?”

It’s both experience and a simple process of deduction that allows him to work out where Kevin is. Sightlines of the Office doors are limited - whoever designed the building also wasn’t an idiot - and Neil knows Kevin well. He hangs up and cuts across the road casually, turning into the small public courtyard there.

“You’ll be feeding the pigeons next,” Neil observes. “Come on.”

Kevin huffs quietly but does as he’s bid, rising from the bench he’s been sitting on and brushing off his coat. His cheeks are flushed vibrant pink from the cold.

“You can drive me,” Neil tells him. “I need to pick up my car.”

They fall into step on the sidewalk, Kevin’s stride typically purposeful.

“He knows,” Neil says. “I didn’t confirm it though.”

“Shit,” Kevin mutters, because for his protestations about Neil’s professionalism, he’s not much better. “You’re sure?”

Neil gives him a look. “Don’t do that.”

When they started working together, it was with the express agreement that they wouldn’t use their skills against each other. That meant that Neil wouldn’t lie to Kevin, and Kevin would take Neil at his word. The other side of the deal was that Kevin - war hero, commander, highly-ranked agent with the president on his speed dial - wouldn’t use his power against Neil Josten, ex-criminal and professional smartass.

They don’t always abide by those promises, but they do when it matters.

“You haven’t been called in,” Neil says, an observation rather than a question.

“Not yet, but I will be,” Kevin says.

It doesn’t make much sense that Neil was called in first, but that’s an issue for later. “You’ve spoken to the president?”

“She’s fine,” Kevin replies, unlocking his car so they can get in. “Not even shaken, as far as I can tell. They took too long to clear the building, but no one else was hurt.”

“Not everyone can meet your high standards,” Neil says. “Any of the hostage takers left alive?”

“No. Two dead by SWAT team, one by self-inflicted GSW.”

“That’s convenient,” Neil thinks aloud, and when Kevin looks at him like he might continue, just shakes his head.

Neil doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore. It’s still hard to shake the idea that those dead hostage takers used to contain information that could be teased out of them if necessary.

The drive across the city is slow in the morning rush hour, though the further they go into areas where most people take public transport, the more the traffic eases. Kevin takes them straight to Andrew’s building at Neil’s command - he knows well enough where Andrew will be at this hour of the day.

Surely enough, Neil’s car is parked illegally out the front of the apartment building. There’s a collection of parking tickets stuffed under the wipers, but no one’s towed it yet. Neil pulls the papers free and throws them into the gutter with the slush.

“He didn’t leave the keys in it,” Neil comments, struck dumb by surprise for a second. “I’ll go up. You don’t need to stay.”

“I need to talk to him,” Kevin says.

Neil snorts. “Good luck with that.”

They could break into the apartment, but Neil isn’t quite that rude, so he buzzes up from the lobby on the once-white plastic intercom. The name scrawled next to apartment 7D is ‘Hemyard’ which is terrible but might stop less intelligent meatheads from breaking in looking for either Minyard.

“Hello?” Nicky sounds drowsy, despite the fact it’s now pushing late morning on the clock. They don’t exactly keep social hours, but still.

“It’s Neil Josten,” Neil replies. “I need to talk to Andrew.”

“Neil!” Nicky says, like they’re actually friends. “I’ll buzz you up. Just shake-”

“-the doorknob, I remember,” Neil finishes. Nicky laughs for some reason, and then there’s a roar like a prison claxon and the gate further into the lobby unlocks. Neil jimmies it properly free when it sticks, holding it for Kevin to go through.

Kevin gives the elevator a suspicious glare and then opens the door to the stairwell instead. That’s fine by Neil - he’s not so good with enclosed spaces since Panama. The stairwell smells of cigarette smoke and trash and mold, which should be disgusting but is mostly just familiar. Neil’s a city boy by birth, and his life thus far hasn’t changed that.

7D is the last apartment down the hall, and the lightbulb over the door is out but the door has been left open for them. Neil knocks once at the door frame before pushing inside.

“Hey!” Nicky chirps from the kitchen nook. He’s wearing sweatpants and a bright pink shirt with a picture of a cat on it, details picked out in crystals. Like most things about Nicky, it’s a statement. Neil, whose statements are usually less visual and more verbal, doesn’t get Nicky at all, but he can respect the aura of not caring that Nicky gives off. It’s fake, but so are most things. That’s not really relevant.

“If you told me you were bringing Kevin I would have worn something sexier,” Nicky continues, winking at Kevin. Kevin looks unmoved.

“Where’s Andrew?” he asks instead.

“Still asleep, I think. You want me to go wake him?” He winces a little bit even as he offers.

“I’ve got it,” Neil replies.

“Just throw stuff at him from the doorway,” Nicky suggests from behind him as he ventures down the hall. “Coffee, Kevin?”

Andrew’s door is firmly closed, as is Aaron’s across the hall. Neil slides it open a crack and says, quite loudly, “Andrew.”

There’s a sharp movement, but it’s startlement against bed sheets, not the sudden violence of genuine reactionary fear. Neil lets go of the door before it’s ripped out of his hand when Andrew opens it all the way.

“What do you want?” Andrew asks, everything ironed off a face rumpled from sleep.

“Kevin wants to talk,” Neil replies. “I want my keys back. I had to break into my own apartment last night.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed by that?”

“No,” Neil says, because he can’t think why Andrew would find that impressive. “I could say you’re meant to be sorry for the inconvenience, but I know that’s a lost cause.”

“You aren’t as stupid as you look,” Andrew says, and closes the door in his face. Neil rolls his eyes and waits for a grand total of three minutes before the door opens again, admitting Andrew fully clothed and holding Neil’s keys.

“Here,” he says, holding out his empty hand palm-up. When Neil imitates him, he drops the keys into the cup of his palm.

“Thanks,” Neil says, shoving them into his pocket. Andrew doesn’t respond, side-stepping Neil to get to the living room.

“Kevin,” he says as he walks in, more an acknowledgement than a greeting. There’s an extra mug on the kitchen bench that he picks up without saying anything to Nicky, who holds up an extra cup in silent offer to Neil. Neil shakes his head.

“Thank you,” Kevin says abruptly, as graceless as ever. “I owe you.”

Andrew sips from the mug he’s folded between his hands. It’s a childish gesture, a little odd considering the personality of the man making it. Then again, it’s cold. Maybe it’s just that.

“You already owed me,” Andrew says.

“For what?” Nicky asks. He knows a lot about his cousin’s past, but there are several gaps in his knowledge of Andrew’s present. If those gaps were filled, Neil has a feeling that he and Kevin would be much less welcome around here. None of them answer him, anyway.

Kevin glances at Nicky briefly, and then says, “Next time.” It’s a farewell, and Andrew just nods.

“That sounds disturbingly like something a mobster would say!” Nicky calls from behind them as they leave. Neil closes the front door of the apartment on that.

“You could have just texted, you know,” he tells Kevin just before they split up to go to their separate cars. Kevin doesn’t dignify that with a response.

Neil doesn’t know all the intricacies of Andrew and Kevin’s relationship. It predates Neil and Kevin’s partnership by at least a year, and if Andrew were to ever sign on with the Agency, Neil is willing to bet that Andrew would be Kevin’s partner and Neil would be a lone operative again.

That’s fine. It won’t ever happen, but it would be fine. At first Neil thought Kevin had something on Andrew, some kind of elaborate blackmailing scheme, and then for a while he wondered if the opposite was true. Now he knows they have some kind of long-running deal, where Andrew shoots people Kevin needs him to shoot and Kevin does...something in exchange. Neil doesn’t know what.

It’s strange, but they’re spec ops. It’s not the strangest thing people have ever done to finish their missions.

 

* * *

 

Kevin doesn’t have a key to Neil’s apartment, but Neil still isn’t surprised when he comes out of his room the next morning and finds the other agent pacing in his living room.

“I hope you bought coffee,” Neil comments just before he spots the paper cup on his kitchen bench. Next to it is an unfolded newspaper.

“A newspaper?” Neil asks, unimpressed. “What is this, 2002?”

Kevin opens his mouth to give a no doubt scathing reply, but stops himself at the last moment in favour of rolling his eyes. “Just look at it.”

Unsurprisingly, the entire front page is dedicated to the hostage situation - even two days later, it’s still the top item on the news. Unfortunately, the picture they’ve selected is one with Andrew Minyard dead centre, in his clearly non-regulation clothes and what is, to anyone with a shred of knowledge, obviously a rifle case.

The headline reads, _The Impossible Shot_ : _Who Saved the President?_

“I told you the cordon was too close,” Neil says mildly.

“That’s not what this is.” Kevin stays close, voice down as though the room isn’t bugged in every place shadowy enough to hide one. Well, as though it would be if Neil didn’t consider it a training exercise of sorts to find them all and remove them. “It’s deliberate.”

Neil looks down at the picture. It shows only Minyard’s face straight on, bored and blonde – Neil, standing beside him, is only viewed from the back, indistinct and plain. The simple fact of the matter is that of course people would be interested in this particular story, so of course it would make the papers.

“Journalists usually are deliberate,” Neil says, and then, “You’re paranoid.”

He taps his finger twice on the bench. It’s a full stop, and a signal between the two of them for _we’ll continue this later._ Kevin is paranoid, though the adage of it not really being paranoia when someone really is out to get you does hold true with him. And while of course journalists would want to write about Minyard, someone should have stopped it before it made the printing press.

But someone didn’t. It’s not paranoia if someone wants to get you, and apparently someone with power wants Minyard dead.

“We’re got a meeting,” Kevin says eventually. He looks calmer in the face of Neil’s silent belief. “The president wants to see us.”

 

* * *

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I want to meet him,” is the first thing the president says.

To Kevin’s credit, he doesn’t flinch. Danielle Wilds is an intimidating woman, all five feet and five inches of her, and while Kevin does have the advantage of long exposure it’s not really enough under the force of her stare.

“Madam President,” he attempts, though he stops when a hand is raised.

“Let’s not stand on ceremony,” she orders him.

“Dan,” Kevin begins again. “You don’t want to meet him.”

She eyeballs him hard for that phrasing. “Has all that range time damaged your hearing?”

“Only if nearly dying has made you insane,” Kevin replies. Dan’s expression doesn’t change, but her husband makes a choked noise.

“If an electoral campaign didn’t send me over the edge, attempted murder won’t have done the job either,” she says evenly. “Set up a meeting. I’ll fit it into my schedule.”

“Why?” Kevin demands. “He won’t be grateful for it.”

Dan makes a face like she doesn’t understand the question. “I’m not looking for his gratitude. It’s more about mine.”

“He won’t care,” Neil cuts in, because Kevin’s slow enough - or stubborn might be a better word, Neil supposes - that he’ll keep arguing if Neil doesn’t stop him. “Also, he’s paranoid.”

“So are you, Neil.” It’s a habit of hers to call him by his first name like they’re friends rather than casual acquaintances - not even that, really.

“I don’t have an issue with meeting someone constantly surrounded by the secret service, though. I doubt Andrew will feel the same way.”

“Then I’ll get rid of them,” Dan suggests.

“Dan.” Matt Boyd is hardly here in an official capacity, he’s here because he’s friends with Kevin and seems, for some reason, to like Neil, but that doesn’t stop him from interjecting. He’s a big friendly bear of a man who smiles all the time. Neil doesn’t understand him - too honest - but he thinks he likes him back.

“We’ll arrange a secure location, and I’ll dismiss them for half an hour. It’s not like I have to worry about him trying to kill me, and I assume both of you will be there.”

“Of course,” Kevin replies.

“Unless you don’t think the two of you are capable of protecting me from a five-foot-tall man who saved my life a few days ago?” She says it with the same tone as a competitive sibling, which is essentially what she and Kevin are.

“Better than the Secret Service,” Kevin mutters, though Neil isn’t quite so sure. He then adds, “It’s not Minyard you need to worry about. It’s whoever is behind the hostage situation. Intel is scarce, and it should have been impossible to keep the last attack as quiet as it was.”

Dan stares at him for a long moment. “You’re implying that you think this was some kind of inside job.”

She isn’t the only one staring. Neil gives Kevin a hard look that goes ignored, and says, “Or they were just better than your average extremist at keeping their mouths shut.”

“The nature of people like that is that they talk, and they recruit,” Kevin counters. “Even lone wolves are rarely completely silent on their intentions. It’s difficult to track that kind of chatter, but we are very good at it, and we heard _nothing_.”

“Maybe your people are slipping,” Dan says. “Or maybe you are. I’m not the only one at risk of internal betrayal, Kevin.”

“Impossible,” Kevin says instantly. “The entire purpose of the Agency is to negate strife within other government bodies by maintaining cohesion and secrecy.”

“Cohesion and secrecy,” Dan echoes, thoughtful, and then shrugs a shoulder. “I’ll watch my back and you watch yours, Day. I’ll get in touch in regards to the meeting with Minyard.”

She looks back to her desk, a clear dismissal, and Matt stands to walk them out. That means they freeze in a tableau of official purpose when Kevin says, “Dan. Please be careful.”

She looks up at him again, and after a moment smiles. “I will be. You do the same - the both of you.”

She sounds sincere. Kevin finally accepts it, nodding at her and standing. Matt leads them to the door and ushers them out, gentle as a lapdog, like he isn’t ex-military. He closes the door behind himself.

Then he hugs Kevin. Kevin weathers it.

“Thank you,” Matt says, slapping Kevin on the back a few times before letting him go. Neil doesn’t get the same treatment, thankfully.

“Doing our jobs,” Kevin says with a shrug, even though it’s a complete lie.

Matt makes a face, a little wry. Kevin probably needs the reminder that ‘cheerful and kind’ and ‘intelligent’ aren’t mutually exclusive qualities. “Sure. Thank you anyway.”

 

* * *

 

Kevin is, for all intents and purposes, Neil’s partner, but that doesn’t mean Neil doesn’t occasionally work alone or with other agents.

His mobile goes off and an hour later he’s climbing onto a military plane with a team bound for Albania. He’s technically the sole set of boots on the ground, equipped with a radio, climbing gear and enough weaponry to take the building on his own. The other agents are ostensibly there as his handlers - there’s weasel-faced Monroe as communications specialist, Bowry on analysis and Parker for exfiltration.

Neil would prefer to be alone, but he’s not dumb enough to say that.

“We should walk through the plan again,” Bowry says. He looks nervous, which is ridiculous seeing as he’ll be safe in a motel room for the entirety of the mission.

“We don’t need to,” Neil replies. His default on missions like this are short, sharp commands, because generally the people he’s sent with aren’t worth real conversation.

“It’s protocol,” Parker points out. He makes Neil look loquacious, but the quiet suits all six and a half feet of him. His existence in the Agency just proves that size isn’t everything when it comes to secrecy. Neil debates referring Kevin to him for advice, then dismisses it. It’s not like he’s seen Parker in action yet.

“We all know what we’re doing here,” Neil comments. “I go in, get the information, get out, and hand it over to you for analysis. Then we leave the country. Simple.”

“It’s fine, Bowry,” Monroe interrupts without looking up from the files in his lap. “Agent Josten knows what he’s doing.”

That stops the quibbling. They spend the rest of the flight in silence, and touch down on a sparsely-used military airbase, transferring directly from the plane to a pair of jeeps. Neil drives with Bowry in the passenger seat and an empty backseat - it’s meant to be a short op, but Neil doesn’t think he’s ever travelled with so many people and so little gear in comparison.

The safehouse for the op is located walking distance to the target, and they settle in to wait for nightfall. Neil uses the time to check that he has the blueprints for the building properly memorised. It’s not SOP when he’ll have people in his ear directing him, but he’s been in situations like this enough times that he knows that sometimes knowing the information himself can get him out of harm’s way a split-second faster than a handler could. Too often there’s a split-second between living and dying, and Neil has no intention of dying tonight.

He changes out into tac gear - black BDUs with clever kevlar armouring in the torso and throat. It’s not enough to stop a bullet, but Neil knows through experience that it turns a knife, and it still allows him the flexibility he needs for the job.

His arms are pretty standard - a pair of handguns, one at his hip and one at his ankle, a collection of knives stored anywhere there’s room for them, a little device like a handheld taser he straps to his wrist, and a small collection of other tricks stored in the pouches on his belt. The climbing gear he shoves into a nondescript dark green pack.

Over top he puts on a brown puffer coat, and then covers his hair with a beanie. It’s the kind of outfit that seems suspicious in concept, but Neil wearing it seems to render it perfectly ordinary. If someone tries to mug him on the way to the target location, it won’t be the first time, and nor will it be the first time he’s made a local petty criminal sorry for picking on a short man.

Once he’s geared up, he goes out to the temporary communications command the others have set up in the kitchen and takes an earpiece comm that he slips in.

“All good?” Monroe asks, voice doubled as the comm comes to life.

“Loud and clear,” Neil replies. “We good to go?”

“Ready when you are,” Monroe replies. “Good luck, Josten. See you on the flip side.”

Neil offers him a salute, and hits the street a minute later headed west. It’s cold out, and he’s grateful for the coat he’s wearing, and the potential warming exercise of breaking and entering. It’s literally a ten minute walk to his destination, and he cuts across a back road to approach the facility from the rear.

There are fences but no external security measures like guards or cameras. There are signs declaring the fence to be electric - the diagram of a person being electrocuted is pretty self-explanatory - but when Neil tests it with a handy device disguised in his phone it reads as uncharged. Lazy work, really. He snips the bottom few links of it with wire-cutters from his pack and then wriggles underneath it.

Even without lighting, Neil still feels exposed as he crosses the open area between the fence and the buildings. He stays low and moves fast, ducking into the shadow of the building as soon as he can.

It’s a typical fifties warehouse, lots of steel and small windows inset high in the wall. Neil shrugs his bag so it’s securely over his shoulders and then shins up the wall using the natural shape of it. Once he’s high enough to be above eye level - people never look up, in his experience - he places his bag on a ledge and goes for the nearest window.

There are lights on inside, though not many. The window itself is dirty, but he can make out the stillness that indicates there aren’t people nearby.

“Bowry,” Neil murmurs. “Your intel is out of date.”

“What?” the comm in Neil’s ear crackles to life. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that this compound is basically deserted.”

“Are you in?” This from Parker.

“About to be,” Neil replies, pulling a knife from his boot. He uses it to lever the window open, the aging clasps giving away under gentle wiggling. Once it’s open wide enough, he pulls himself through the narrow gap onto a ceiling beam on the other side. It’s not as good as a gantry system, but it’s also considerably less likely to be patrolled. Balancing careful on the narrow span, he slides the window back open behind him.

In an ideal world, he’ll go out the same way he came in, with no one the wiser he’s ever been here. He’s had plenty of missions end just like that, but he’s also had a few where he’s left the facility at a run through the front doors, usually bleeding and often pursued by gunfire. That’s the nature of the job.

Neil takes a moment to look around him. “Stationary cameras. No sign of a foot patrol.”

“They’re scheduled to be on the other side of the facility currently,” Parker reports. “Not due at your location for ten minutes.”

“Copy,” Neil replies, and starts to shimmy down the wall on the inside, half-sliding and half-climbing. The cameras, being stationary, are laughably easy to evade, and within moments he’s in one of the smaller rooms sectioned off from the rest of the double-height building.

It may be the middle of the night, but the data Neil has seen had indicated that there was both a day and a night shift. That just means that, as he makes his way through a series of unoccupied rooms following the memorised map in his head, there’s a little alarm in the back of his head going off continuously.

He doesn’t stop. Hesitation is just as likely to get an agent killed as rushing in recklessly. Finally he finds an office with a desktop computer terminal - they used to be much easier to find before people started getting laptops. Then again, sometimes Neil gets to break into apartments of unsuspecting corporate workers to steal confidential data rather than needing to get on the company intranet, so he can’t really complain.

“Found a terminal,” Neil says, double tapping the mouse and bringing the screen to life. Hacking computers has never been his strong point, but these days he can just put a memory drive into the USB port and basically let the software attached do all the work.

It’ll create a duplicate of the machine down to all the documents stored wherever it has access. Neil always thinks it must collect a lot of intra-office emails, but he’s not in analysis so that isn’t his problem.

The light on the memory stick flashes from orange to green to indicate it’s finished, so he pulls it out. “Done.”

“Command says you might need to find a central terminal for what we need,” Bowry says. “Will that be a problem?”

“No,” Neil replies, because what else is he going to say? He ducks out of the room and follows the hall further, looking for something that resembles a main office. He finds a set of stairs and goes up them on a hunch, and finds a distinctly more salubrious set up with a large window overlooking the rest of the building.

“Looking promising,” he notes for the comms, heading towards the window but staying back out of sight. If he was the head of this operation, he would want a clear view over everyone else - sometimes making deductions is a pretty simple intuitive leap.

There’s a hall, and it’s technically walled with glass, several doors leading off of it. Neil cracks the door of the first and finds a surprisingly elegant office for a warehouse. There’s also a sleek sleeping desktop computer on the desk.

He uses the same memory stick, waking the computer with a twitch of his gloved fingers on the mouse. The orange light on the memory stick flickers on, and the screen unlocks itself to the homescreen. The background picture is of a dog and a potted geranium, so bland Neil can’t distinguish whether it’s a stock photo or the office owner’s beloved pet.

“Orders from on high,” Parker says abruptly. “Abort mission. We’re retreating. Going dark in T-minus 10 seconds.”

“What?” Bowry demands. “He’s-”

“You’ve got your orders,” Monroe interrupts. “Josten, rendezvous in an hour at the secondary meeting point.”

Just like that, Neil’s earpiece goes silent. Sighing soundlessly, he removes it and shoves it into his pocket.

In the ensuing silence, he has a split-second to register the sound of footsteps along the hall. He drops, ducking behind the desk, and then realises with a tense internal curse that the screen is still on and spilling light across the office. Before he can reach up to flick it off, the footsteps pause, and then much more carefully approach the open office door as someone peers inside.

Neil can see it. Faced with a silent, otherwise dark office and a building seemingly undisturbed, the person patrolling will assume the computer wasn’t properly asleep. They’ll either ignore it or come in to turn it off, probably stepping on a crouching Neil in the process.

There’s no point in hoping for the first option. He’s unsurprised when the footsteps resume, coming closer.

The figure that rounds the desk is half caught in the light. Neil hits them at mid-thigh level and smacks them into the floor, thankful for the thick carpeting in this office. Twenty seconds later he has the person hogtied and hidden behind the desk, and he’s out of there.

It’s not a big facility, and he knows he doesn’t have long before that guard is missed. Neil looks at his watch and curses again as he slips back down the hallway. If they’re wheels up from the secondary rendezvous point then he’s risking being late, and at this point he has no faith that the other three won’t leave him to make his own way out of the country.

He could do it, but he has better things to do than evading Albanian border patrols.

Exfil has never been Neil’s speciality. That’s because every time he thinks of the complexities of the future, the present seems to turn to shit and make the planning moot. Case in point: when he glances up from his watch, he looks straight into the masks of a half-dozen armed men who have appeared from nowhere on the second floor.

They’re dressed for dancing - close combat, no guns, or at least none unholstered yet. There’s a crackle as a stun baton comes to life, the flash of a knife. Apparently they’re aiming to capture, not kill. Probably with a side of torture.

Neil has a K-bar and that’s it. He sighs.

 

* * *

 

The rendezvous point is a drab-looking two-bedroom house. Neil circles it once and finds it uncompromised before he slips inside and into the kitchen. He can hear the voices of his teammates from the lounge next door, relaxed and also uncompromised. Presumably they have a great deal of faith in Neil’s skills.

He’s pouring himself a glass of water when someone walks into the room. Parker is saying, “wheels up in,” still looking over his shoulder, but he stops when he turns and sees Neil. “Josten.”

“What?” Bowry asks from the other room, appearing in the door a moment later. “Agent Josten. Do you need medical attention?”

Well, that answers the question of what Neil looks like. Neil tosses the flash drive onto the rickety kitchen table, cutting a trail in the layer of dust. “There’s your data. When do we leave?”

“Twenty minutes,” Bowry stutters. “Monroe, make sure the medic is-”

“Don’t worry,” Neil tells him. “It’s not my blood.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a pain in the ass to set the meet up. For one thing, getting the president anywhere secretively is basically impossible. For another, when Andrew notices the building they’ve pulled up in front of, he gives Neil a look. For most people that would be standard. For Andrew, who rarely if ever focuses his attention on anything that isn’t a rifle scope, it’s unnerving.

“You’re not under arrest, if you’re wondering,” Neil tells him, and gets out of the car. He leaves the door open.

“I haven’t done anything you can arrest me for anyway,” comes the reply from inside the car. It’s followed by the scent of cigarette smoke.

“Statute of limitations isn’t up for half of it,” Neil replies. “But if I wanted to get rid of you, I would have dropped you in a hole under HQ and been done with it a while ago.”

Andrew climbs out of the car, cigarette in hand, and shoots Neil a look across the roof. “I don’t appreciate you lying to me.”

“I didn’t say where we were going. You got into the car without asking.”

“A lie by omission is still a lie.”

Neil snorts. “I hope you can sense the hypocrisy of that statement.”

“I didn’t realise we were friends who told each other everything.”

“And I didn’t realise we were friends.”

“We’re not,” Andrew says, but Neil already knew that. He doesn’t know what they are, but it’s not friends.

“Hurry up,” Neil says. “We don’t have all day.”

Andrew drops the cigarette and grinds it out under his shoe. “Lead the way, Special Agent.”

Dan might have dismissed her protection, but they haven’t gone far. Andrew, walking a step behind Neil, says, “Oh, look. Security,” loud enough for one pretending to be a secretary at the downstairs desk to hear.

“Leave them alone,” Neil says, though internally he agrees. They take the elevator, Neil swiping a card Kevin gave to him earlier so they’re taken straight up to the penthouse.

The elevator opens onto a second lobby, all marble and fancy carpets. Neil has to wonder which rich businessman is out of a workspace today. Allison Reynolds is sitting at the desk in a skirt suit, though Neil is reasonably sure no real receptionist would wear that jacket without a blouse underneath it.

“Good morning,” she says, with a lipsticked smile that she probably imagines is polite and not predatory. Neil really has no idea why Dan hired her, besides the fact that she could probably kill Neil and Andrew both one-handed.

“Morning,” Neil says, and opens the door past her where Dan and Kevin are waiting.

This time, it’s Kevin at the desk, whereas Dan has eschewed that for one of the white leather couches to one side. There’s a million dollar view behind them, but all four of them are firmly focussed on one another.

They’re all of them in their own right dangerous people. Andrew’s a different breed of it, though not by much. The callsign of Kevin and Neil’s careers is ruthless precision, cold and calculated to the quick. The difference is that Andrew has never made money off of the same characteristic.

Or, really, the difference is that Andrew has been incorrectly called a loose cannon enough times that he decided to play everything like that’s true.

“I hope you warned her about me,” Andrew says to Kevin, fine-edged and falsely teasing. For a man who claims not to lie, he’s a good actor.

“I hope they warned you about me,” Dan replies without missing a beat. “Mister Minyard. Thank you for saving my life.”

You don’t get to be president without learning to take control of a situation, apparently. Andrew doesn’t look particularly thrown, but Neil can recognise the hint of interest in him, there and gone again. He says, “Hyperbole is a presidential trait. Who knew?”

“You didn’t strike me as the type to quibble,” Dan replies easily. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“Misspent youth,” Andrew says.

“For most of us, that refers to petty theft and illegal drinking, not savant-level sniping,” Dan notes. It’s not a question, and Andrew makes no move to offer more information. “You didn’t go into the military?”

“No,” Andrew replies. “I nearly ended up at a military-style boot camp, if that counts.”

“Was that before or after the stint in juvie?” It doesn’t surprise Neil that Dan has done her research, and it doesn’t seem to surprise Andrew either.

“Before. And this is beginning to sound like a recruitment spiel.”

“I imagine you’ve had a few of those. These gentlemen haven’t convinced you to sign with the Agency yet?”

“I’m not good at following orders. Anyone who thinks they can change that is fooling themselves,” Andrew says. “It turns out that a lot of spies and soldiers are fools.”

Dan grins toothily, the expression aimed at Kevin. “Now I see what you like about him.”

“I don’t agree with him,” Kevin replies. He sounds constipated.

“Stupid people rarely know they’re stupid,” Andrew comments breezily, without looking at Kevin. “Look at Neil.”

Neil doesn’t rise to the offhand bait. “The Agency isn’t interested in hiring people that don’t want to work for them.”

“No, they just probably blackmail them into doing the work instead. It’s very American,” Andrew says. Kevin probably winces internally waiting for Dan to ask if that’s why Andrew saved her life, but she doesn’t.

“I’ll take it that you aren’t a patriot then,” she notes, somewhat drily.

“I think a better question is; why are you one?” Andrew replies. “I know our great country has never served you particularly well.”

Any amusement falls off of Dan’s face. It’s an expression that Neil recognises, generally from the news. “If you know anything about me – which clearly you do – then you know I’m the one here to serve.”

“I’ve heard the rhetoric. I’m interested to know if it’s actually true.”

Dan stares at him for a long moment. Her gaze is evaluating, like she’s wondering whether Andrew is worth the real answer. She must decide so, because she says, “The truth is, you’re right. The people in power in this country did shit-all to help me when I was growing up, directly or indirectly. That’s why I did all of this. I wanted to put myself in a position to do better for people like me than anyone else would. My platform is as true as politics ever gets.”

Andrew sighs. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Excuse me?”

“You grew up with him.” Andrew gestures at Kevin, the closest to offhand he gets. “Clearly it’s not genetic, but you know what they say about nature and nurture.”

“What is, exactly?”

“Idealism.” Andrew shrugs. “It will make for a pretty quote in your autobiography, at least.”

Dan, unexpectedly, smiles. “You’re an interesting man.”

Neil waits for her to continue, but she doesn’t. Andrew’s fingers twitch like they always do when he’s stymied.

“Your neighbourhood - any projects in need of support?” Dan asks. “Sports teams, church groups, schools, that kind of thing.”

Andrew shrugs. “I’m not a part of the community council.”

“Maybe not, but there’s something you care about.”

“I don’t care about anything.” It’s not the first time Neil has heard him say that.

Dan’s eyebrows tick up a little, though she’s not surprised. “You have a lot of opinions about the failures of the Union for someone who doesn’t care.”

“That’s called realism,” Andrew tells her flatly, “And I don’t want anything from you.”

“Okay,” she replies. “I won’t force it on you. I can just owe you a favour.”

Andrew’s face doesn’t move, but Neil knows exactly the mental gymnastics he’s doing trying to justify demanding gear for his local school’s sports team just so that he doesn’t have the president’s debt to him hanging over his head. He obviously doesn’t think of anything, because he doesn’t speak again.

Dan clearly surmises this too, because she smiles. “Don’t be afraid to get in touch if you need anything.”

 

* * *

 

There was a point in Neil’s career where he bypassed understandable paranoia and reached a level of obsessive hyperfocus which is basically inhuman. His Agency-appointed therapist would have a field day if he admitted that to her. It’s moot anyway, seeing as Neil has never told her anything of even vague importance.

There are some days he swears he could go on like this forever. There are some where he knows that, at some point, something’s going to give. Mostly his life is making sure he pushes that point as far out into the future as possible.

Situations not in his favour include sitting down for a coffee in a three-table cafe down the street from his apartment and knowing without looking that someone is watching him. However, before he has time to discreetly try to look for the observer, the bell on the door jangles, admitting Riko Moriyama into the cafe.

He smiles when he sees Neil, like they’re long-lost friends. The expression comes nowhere near his eyes.

“Good morning, Neil,” he says, taking the seat across the table.

The sensation of being watched hasn’t abated. Neil says, “Did you make Jean break into someone’s apartment to stare at me?”

“His expression always makes me lose my appetite,” Riko muses. “Also, he’s better at the other end of a rifle.”

Neil sniffs a bit. “Cute. If you pull your seat back a few more inches then the brain matter might not dirty up your suit.”

As usual, Neil’s ‘lack of respect’ - generally portrayed through sarcasm - makes the cracks in Riko’s facade show faster than anything else. He sighs, mock-disappointed. “So little regard for your life. Don’t you realise how much money we’ve spent on you?”

“I’m a fancy weapon,” Neil agrees. “Maybe one day they’ll figure out how to get a better grip on the trigger.”

“I think the grip on you is still tight enough,” Riko says. “But I’m sure it could be corrected if necessary.”

Thankfully, Neil manages to restrain himself before giving the answer he wants to, which is of course _I dare you to try_. Instead he says, “Did you want something?”

“The Director wants to see you. Tomorrow, 9 AM, in his office.”

Neil laughs. “You know, if you’re so dead-set on proving you’re my superior, you might want to wait until you’ve got a better reason to find me than acting as a messenger.”

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to perturb Riko like it should. He says, smiling, “I’ll see you then,” and stands.

“Can’t wait!” Neil calls after him.

 

* * *

 

Neil is there the next morning dead on 9, and is ushered straight through. As ever, the Director is at his desk. Perhaps unusually, he looks up when Neil steps inside and gives him a long look before gesturing to Neil’s usual seat on the other side of the desk. “Josten. Take a seat.”

“Sir,” Neil says, and sits. He’s expecting the Director to sign a few things before he continues talking, but he doesn’t even glance away. Neil’s training - his entire life - says that he’s safer when people aren’t looking at him, and this situation is no exception.

“I want you to join in on training with the Omega Team,” the Director says.

“Am I being reassigned?” It would technically be a sideways shift into the team lead by Riko and ostensibly Jean, rather than a demotion, but it’s not one that Neil is interested in.

“Not currently,” the Director replies. “Consider it a trial.”

Well, that’s a relatively easy workaround. “When, sir?”

He looks at his watch. “Ten minutes, Gym Four.”

If there’s one thing the Director is, it’s precise. Neil stands with a polite farewell and bolts for the changing room as soon as he’s out of the office, exchanging his street clothes for Agency-issue sweats and a t-shirt. There are other people in there, though no one he recognises. Some of them look at him with varying degrees of distaste.

Neil knows he’s an anomaly in this line of work. Most of the people recruited for the Agency are ex-military or ex-intelligence, the finest from the letter agencies. Neil, as an ex-criminal, is very much the odd man out, and not one of his peers has ever particularly appreciated that he’s Alpha-level and Kevin Day’s partner.

That’s fine. Neil’s never particularly cared about that, though he’s a little suspicious some of them might use today’s training as an excuse to eke out some twisted kind of revenge.

Riko is waiting for him in Gym Four. He smiles when he sees Neil. It’s not nice, not at all. He has a collection of his team around him, all dressed in black, with Jean at the back leaning against the wall.

Well. Neil knew he was the odd man out, and he’s not surprised Riko is using this opportunity to really hammer that home.

Forty-five minutes later Neil is sparring with two Omega agents each armed with a baton, about sixty percent sure one of his fingers is broken and one hundred percent sure he’s going to be black and blue tomorrow. The only bonus is that they’re not going to look much better - his own baton is an easy weight in his hand, an extension to his arm with which his aim is unerring.

He might have exaggerated his skill with a rifle, but he’s always done the opposite with everything else. It’s taken a fair bit of talking around his own skills in mission reports, but it’s worth it to see the surprise on Rollins’ face when Neil drops him for the third time, this time hard enough he gags.

“Break,” Riko commands coolly from the edge of the mats. “Nyoto, Moreau, you’re up.”

Neil lowers his arm, sure it can’t be that easy, at which point Riko adds, “Josten, don’t move.”

Neil doesn’t bother to even look at him. He swaps the baton into his left hand and relaxes his right while the other two trade off.

Jean is Jean. Nyoto is a smaller man, though still taller than Neil and considerably broader. He looks delighted to be facing off with Neil, spinning his baton between his fingers impatiently.

It’s that that does him in. Jean hangs back while Nyoto dives straight in, but what he dives into is Neil’s boot solidly aimed at his stomach. He goes down hard, retching, and goes off rather than coming back for more.

Jean, meanwhile, has been standing at ease at the edge of the mats. He watches Nyoto stagger his way off with level eyes and then looks back to Neil.

It’s been a while since they worked together - the last op was a search-and-destroy in Kiev that turned sour and ended up with the two of them driving over the border offroad in a stolen SUV with a laptop full of nuclear armament locations in the centre console. Neil had burned the vehicle out because it was full of Jean’s blood - the laptop they’d handed over to the NATO forces who had airlifted them out of dodge.

“You’re the finale of this audition, right?” Neil asks, voice low, circling a little bit. Jean’s fresh and Neil isn’t, but he’s used to those kind of odds.

“You think this is just an audition?” Jean asks just as quietly. His eyes are clear and cold, ice in every line of his face. “That you might end up a lowly Omega member? That’s not what this is about.”

“This is about Riko,” Neil replies, half a question and half a statement. “I didn’t realise he was shopping for a new partner for you.”

“Not for me,” Jean clarifies.

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Then I suppose you better win.”

Unexpectedly, Jean grins. “You suppose?”

It turns out Jean is better than Neil. Not only is he just as fast and just as dirty, he also has inches of extra reach and uses it wisely. Neil lands hits on his limbs - Jean hits him across the ribs once, and over the collarbone so hard he goes down, momentarily sure it’s broken.

It’s training. At that point, someone should have called for a break, or at least a hold. Instead, Neil has to roll out of the way to avoid another hit to his chest. Rather than scrambling to his feet he kicks out viciously, catching Jean in the knees and dropping him.

So, dirty, but not quite as dirty as Neil. That’s not surprising - Jean has always had a noble streak, for all he’s buried it deep, but Neil sure as fuck doesn’t.

Neil grasps for the baton he’s dropped, reaching past the pain in his collarbone as he does it. Jean, somehow already on his feet, steps on Neil’s wrist - not hard, just a threat. Neil has precisely zero doubt that he wouldn’t hesitate to drop his weight if Neil moves.

“Yield,” Neil says, because this is about Riko, but Riko isn’t the one on the mat with him right now. True to form, Jean removes his boot and takes several steps back. Noble doesn’t mean stupid, and he’s careful to stay out of Neil’s range.

“Is that all you’ve got, Josten?” Riko demands from the sideline.

“Hey, Riko,” Neil replies, pushing himself up onto a knee. “Fuck you.”

Riko somehow seems surprised by Neil’s nerve. Neil knows he shouldn’t have said it, but he meant it, and the words feel good coming out. Not as good as the expression on Riko’s face though.

Riko steps forward across the mat. Jean falls back without asking, looking eager to get out of the way. Neil stands to meet him and doesn’t give any ground. They end up with a foot between them that feels like less.

“With your parentage, I really expected better,” Riko says silkily.

“Your mistake,” Neil replies.

He’s tired, and definitely injured, but even if he wasn’t he isn’t sure he would have been able to turn Riko’s strike to his belly. He definitely wouldn’t have been able to stop the handy way he’s grabbed and thrown over Riko’s hip onto the ground. He lands hard, another bolt of pain shooting up his arm and into his chest.

Before he can move, Riko’s boot descends. He doesn’t bother anything weak like the wrist, the tread of it biting into the back of Neil’s neck. There’s a long, expectant silence, like the room is waiting for Riko’s judgement. Neil, of course, doesn’t wait.

“Good thing they already wore me out for you,” he rasps into the mat.

Predictably, Riko doesn’t take that well.


	2. CONVICTION

 

 

 

Kevin texts him, and five minutes later Neil is jogging out the front door of his apartment and getting into the passenger seat of his car.

Kevin casts him a look, and then pulls out into traffic. His expression says it all. That doesn’t stop him from adding, “You couldn’t have worn a suit?”

Neil shrugs. “You said to hurry.”

“It takes five minutes to put on a professional outfit-”

“Sometimes it takes five minutes to hide all my weaponry,” Neil counters blandly, which is a complete lie - it doesn’t take that long, not even close - and a comment that makes Kevin sputter.

They’re ten minutes into the drive when Neil feels Kevin’s eyes on him. After a moment, he sighs. “You’re still bad with a stick of concealer.”

“I use liquid now,” Neil says, but doesn’t deny the point. Honestly, he’s not sure even someone with skills could completely shield the bruise he has blooming over his collarbone and up his neck. On the upside, he’s at least eighty percent sure nothing is broken.

“Mission?”

“Nope,” Neil says. Kevin’s quick look at him is a prompt to continue that Neil ignores completely. “Where are we going?”

“To meet with Dan,” Kevin replies. “I have some information on the hostage takers I want to brief her on.”

“That’s not really SOP,” Neil says, and this time he’s the one ignored. He squints a bit. “Do you really have to drag me into every situation you don’t have the Director’s approval for?”

“No. I can let you out here,” Kevin says, and to his credit he is serious. If Neil said the word, Kevin would drop him off and they wouldn’t talk about this trip again.

He’s also serious about dropping Neil off here, miles from his apartment, of course.

“And leave you with no one to watch your back? Unlikely,” Neil replies.

“And that’s why I didn’t ask.” He’s looking at the road but Neil can hear his smile.

“Asking forgiveness instead of permission it is, then,” Neil says, though without much real rancor.

They’re ushered through security without issues, in part due to Kevin’s face and Neil’s familiarity. It’s a small wonder that Kevin isn’t widely recognisable, considering his connections to Dan, but somehow although his name is occasionally bandied around, his face has never had the same treatment. On the other hand, it’s likely more to do with good management than good luck - the Agency is good at suppression.

Dan is waiting for them again at her desk when they’re ushered through. She seems to be reading from a file and she doesn’t look up at them. She says, “Sorry, gentlemen. You’ve caught me on a busy day. What can I do for you?”

Neil, in the midst of ignoring Kevin’s answer, nearly pauses. The president has a new aide, gathering a stack of other files from the desk. Neil carefully doesn’t react to the sight of Renee Walker in the Oval Office.

He doesn’t know Renee that well, but he knows the rumours, knows plenty of cases where those rumours are true. If she’s here she’s playing at this position, and it’s not Neil’s job to question his superiors but he really has to wonder what the hell they’re thinking.

She’s a perfect sleeper agent, smiling and sweet. She looks not even a touch out of place in her plain suit, but she never looks out of place anywhere.

Neil doesn’t see Kevin notice her, but he must, because he says, “Can we have the room?”

“Of course,” Dan replies, and commands Renee and her bodyguards out of the office.

Once the room is empty, Kevin produces a slim file and passes it across the desk to Dan, who takes it and opens it. They wait in silence while she reads over it, eyes flicking across the page. When she’s done, she looks up at Kevin for a moment, and then to Neil, before she says, “The word ‘vague’ was invented for this information.”

Kevin rolls his eyes at that, though it seems more out of habit than genuine offense. “You should be impressed I found anything.”

Dan’s expression turns momentarily complicated, there and then gone. “I am impressed. But there’s not much I can do with this.”

“Pass it onto your security team,” Kevin recommends, which is precisely when Neil realises this is less about an exchange of information and more about Kevin’s crusade to protect Dan in particular. It’s no wonder he didn’t get approval before coming here. “They should be able to make use of it.”

“I thought that went without saying,” Dan says. “Not to be rude, but is there anything else?”

“That’s all,” Kevin confirms.

“Thank you,” Dan says. “Neil, can I speak with you for a moment?”

Kevin frowns. Neil doesn’t. “Of course, ma’am.”

She eyes Kevin. “Privately.”

Kevin sighs. “Really?”

“We’re doing business here, Day,” she says impishly. “Don’t worry, you can have him back afterwards.”

“Fine.” Kevin turns to the door, and then turns back. “Ten minutes. You are meant to be busy.”

“Goodbye Kevin,” Dan says pointedly, without looking up from her desk. Kevin huffs but does as he’s told. The door closes reasonably behind him.

“You know I’m going to tell him what you say anyway,” Neil points out afterwards.

“You can’t convince me that you tell him everything,” she replies. She isn’t wrong. “I trust your discretion. In general, and in regards to Kevin.”

She looks up, putting her pen aside. “How do you find Agency employment?”

Neil looks back at her for a long moment. “Is this where you offer me a job?”

“God, no,” she snorts. “No offence, of course. It’s just curiosity.”

“It’s fulfilling,” Neil replies.

She waits for him to go on, and when he doesn’t her eyebrows rise a little. “Fulfilling, alright. Do you trust your fellow agents?”

“Ma’am, I don’t trust anyone.” Neil has now been more honest with the president than he has with his psychologist. That said, his psychologist could probably have guessed that anyway.

“Fair enough,” Dan says. “Now, tell me the real reason you work for the Agency.”

Neil is quiet, considering. There’s a good chance that someone with her power already knows a lot about him, even the things that the Agency has scoured from public and even private record. But then - this is Dan Wilds, his partner’s sister, who knows more about the Agency than probably anyone else outside of it. If he can’t tell her at least part of the truth, he can’t tell anyone.

“You asked Andrew where he came from, and how he learned to do what he does,” Neil tells her, “And the answer was ‘from the gutter’ and ‘started early’. I started early, too. I just happened to learn most of what I know from my family. I grew up in a mansion, not the gutter, and the big house was paid for by blood money. When I decided that I wanted to get away from that life, the Agency was the only place that would employ me. They had their own motives for offering, and I had some for accepting that I never told, but that’s why I’m standing here now.”

“I understand,” Dan says. “What I’m about to tell you I don’t want you to tell Kevin, and I think that will work out fine because once you know, you won’t want to tell him anyway.”

“...okay?” Neil says, his mind immediately going over the multiple horrible options he can imagine off of the bat.

She taps the folder on her desk, the one Kevin handed her. “Do you know what this says?”

“No.”

“That seems awfully trusting of you, handing over information you haven’t even seen.”

“It’s part of the job,” Neil replies with a shrug.

“It’s a list of relatively sketchy connections between the people who tried to kill me and various criminal organisations,” she supplies. “Nothing as damning as them exchanging emails with the KKK or ‘Death to Democracy’, but I’m sure you know that some of the most important trails are subtle, at least at first.”

“Analysis isn’t really my area,” Neil says. “My work tends to be a little more...face to face.”

“Fair enough.” She pulls open a drawer on her desk, and removes a slim black briefcase with a lock on it that she types a pin into before opening it. From it she withdraws a file and passes it over to him.

Neil opens it, and finds himself looking at a picture of Riko Moriyama. Somehow, he doesn’t chuckle.

“I’m interested to know what you make of the man in the picture. We’ve met, of course, but I don’t know him very well.”

“I think he’s an asshole,” Neil says, “But he’s a very skilled operative. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Because Kevin’s isn’t the only information that has come to my attention recently around connections with east coast crime families.”

Neil feels a chill race up and down his spine and does his damnedest to keep any trace of that from his face. He thinks, _Fuck_. “What?”

“According to my sources, Riko has had some communication with a particular organisation that is, at the very least, a cover for a far-reaching criminal enterprise.” She smiles a little. “You don’t need to look worried. I’ve known about your connections for a long time. Did you think Kevin wouldn’t tell me?”

Neil manages a breath. “Then I don’t understand the relevance.”

“Is it normal in your line of work to rely on criminals to get the job done?” Her voice does imply that she hopes the answer to that is ‘no’, but her face says it might be a better explanation than whatever she is considering.

Neil considers Andrew, and says, “We are trained to do whatever is necessary to ensure the success of our missions.”

“So if I were to say that I’ve heard that Riko Moriyama is in some way responsible for the attack on me, you’d be surprised?”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Neil says. “Or, I’d believe that that was what you heard, but I doubt it’s true. As I said, he’s a complete asshole, but I don’t think he would go against the Director’s orders. And I’m sure if you looked at the communications of any Agency operatives, there’s a good chance they would look similar.”

“I see,” Dan says. “Thank you for your insight, Neil.”

Neil nods, taking that as a dismissal, but pauses before he actually moves to leave. “You think I won’t want to tell Kevin this.”

“I think you won’t want to pass on to Kevin that his sister is suspicious of someone that may as well be his brother.”

“They’re not that close anymore.”

Dan tilts her head. “Strangely, I find that a comfort. Either way, I would prefer you didn’t say anything about this conversation to Kevin, but I also understand if you do. I do know, at least, that the two of you are close.” She smiles as she says that last, and her expression is approving. Then it turns more serious. “Kevin is finding it very difficult to get the information he is looking for.”

Neil considers that. “You think someone is hiding it from him in particular?”

Dan shrugs, which doesn’t seem very presidential but is very her. “Just something to consider.”

When he joins Kevin outside, Kevin’s look is interrogative, but he waits until they’re secluded in the car to ask aloud. “What did she say to you?”

In the end, it’s not a hard decision. Neil shrugs. “She found out about my father. Wanted to check I’m not going to become a criminal mastermind, I guess.”

Kevin frowns thoughtfully. “Huh.”

“It took you a lot longer than a ten minute conversation to decide I wouldn’t,” Neil reminds him. “She’s doing well, by comparison.”

“When I met you, you were a criminal mastermind,” Kevin points out, but he does subside.

 

* * *

 

Neil’s not exactly the nightclubbing type, unless he’s there to work. However, even he can’t pass this particular trip off as a part of his day job.

He digs through his closet until he finds an old undercover outfit - dark jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt, neither of which fits as well now he’s put on some muscle - and debates wearing his shoulder holster for a moment before stashing a knife in his boot instead. It’s nowhere near as effective, but it makes him feel less exposed.

The queue at Eden’s Twilight is long even though it’s a Thursday, but the bouncers wave him straight through. Neil should be irritated that he’s apparently that recognisable, but it’s working in his favour right now so he ignores it.

The inside of the club is as loud and boisterous as ever. Neil slips through the crowds and pushes his way up to the bar, between a variety of people in leather and lace and metal. The footwear is especially impractical - there are a lot of very high heels, and the boots he sees are less like the sturdy and practical combat boots he wears and more...clunky.

At the bar, Roland is working the crowd, all flashy movements where Nicky is relying on his grin and lack of a shirt. The two of them are gears in a well-oiled machine. It’s Roland who catches sight of Neil first, and he looks him up and down before he starts with recognition. He elbows Nicky in the ribs, and Nicky is the one who ignores people who’ve been here longer to lean over the bar towards Neil.

“Hey!” he says. His breath smells soda-sweet. “Fancy seeing you here! Can I get you a drink?”

“A coke,” Neil says, and although Nicky makes an amused face he pours Neil one and accepts the cash Neil hands over in exchange.

“If you’re looking for the twins, they’re out there somewhere,” Nicky says, making a loose gesture towards the crowd. “But you can stick here with me instead. Promise it’ll be more fun.”

Neil gives him a thin-lipped smile, because he honestly doesn’t hate Nicky enough to pretend to like him but doesn’t like him enough to do more than that. He takes his drink and leans an elbow against one of the empty bar tables to wait. It only takes ten minutes before he’s joined by someone.

Neil is nearly fooled at the first glance. It doesn’t last long when Aaron says, “What can I do for you?”

“Stick to flirting with girls,” Neil advises, and sees the shift of Aaron’s expression from blank-but-warm to his normal irritation. “Where’s your brother?”

“Working,” Aaron replies, faux-sweet. “What do you want?”

“I’m just here to socialise,” Neil says in the same tone. “I love this song.”

Aaron rolls his eyes and leaves without another word. In his wake, Neil smiles just a touch.

“You’d think you would get less satisfaction from winding up someone constantly on the edge of snapping,” a voice says in his ear.

“I’ve always liked a cheap shot,” Neil replies, watching Andrew settle his own arm on the other side of table in mirror-image to Neil.

“What do you want?” Andrew asks after a moment.

“Nothing,” Neil replies. “Maybe I’m into nightclubbing now.”

“‘Nightclubbing’,” Andrew repeats blandly. He reaches across the table and taps at Neil’s collar bone. “Hickey?”

“Lovetap,” Neil corrects. “Have you ever met Riko Moriyama?”

“Kevin’s ex-soulmate? No,” Andrew says. “Is he the one who gave you that?”

“Indirectly. He’s nice like that.”

“He must really like you.”

“Something like that.” Neil keeps his tone light, but Andrew is more than capable of reading the sarcasm and translating it to ‘utter hatred’. “The two of you probably wouldn’t get on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Andrew says, because he can translate that too. “Why are you here?”

Neil was really hoping Andrew wouldn’t ask him that. He shrugs. “The company.”

“I didn’t realise leather was to your taste.” As if to punctuate that, a tall woman in leather pants arm-in-arm with a shorter woman in an ill-fitting bustier walk in front of their table. Or maybe it’s meant to fit like that, Neil doesn’t know.

Neil has heard refrains on the same joke plenty of times, though mostly from Nicky. “I’m not interested in leather. Or anything else.”

“Hm,” Andrew replies, barely audible even in a momentary lull in the music. “You are here because you are in some way looking for reassurance that whatever idiotic thing you are planning on doing is a good idea, and because you are too stupid to realise that you’ll do it anyway, reassurance or no.”

“Ouch,” Neil says mildly.

“It’s the same reason you always come here,” Andrew continues, “Besides asking me to shoot people.”

“I don’t think you know enough to know what I’m doing, let alone whether it’s stupid or not.”

Andrew gives him an inscrutable look, though Neil suspects it’s largely judgemental. “I met you eighteen months ago, Neil. Your stupid ideas seem to always end in injuries.”

Neil thinks back, and almost has to concede the point - maybe he does sometimes come here before missions, some of them more dangerous than others, but it hasn’t been intentional - except, “Even my good ideas sometimes end with me injured.”

“I suspect that is related to relativity.”

“Excuse me?”

“The good ideas of stupid people are still bad, comparatively,” Andrew clarifies. Asshole.

Still. Neil shrugs again. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll try not to die.”

“I don’t care what you do,” Andrew replies, and takes Neil’s empty glass with him when he leaves.

Andrew is right, in his own way - Neil is about to do something indubitably stupid.

He thinks about Renee Walker, elite Agency operative, in Dan Wilds’ office. He thinks about Riko and his connections, and about Kevin’s information and all the things he is struggling to find, and his own past.

He wants answers; he just doesn’t have many places to find them. But he does know where to start.

 

* * *

 

A part of working for the Agency means never really knowing your coworkers beyond their first names and exactly how good they are at their jobs, and sometimes not even those things. Neil and Kevin’s relationship is unusual, as far as Neil knows - Agents are by nature loners, which is mostly how they’ve lived so long, but Neil and Kevin are basically the Agency version of codependent. For example: Kevin is the only other operative whose home Neil has ever visited.

Well, that had been true until tonight. Another part of grouping highly secretive and dangerous people together is that sometimes one of them will bend protocol to get information on their coworkers. An example: finding their on-file address.

Neil scopes out the building carefully from a distance, flicking through modes on his binoculars. It’s a detached house in the suburbs with four heat signatures, one of them small enough to be a domestic cat and the other clearly a heater. Neil didn’t realise that Renee has a partner, but he considers that irrelevant.

If he needs to, he’ll eliminate them both.

Renee’s security system has had a few upgrades since being installed, but it’s nothing that Neil can’t get past. It’s less that he’s trying not to trigger them - he doesn’t care that much about subtlety - and more that she’s included a few lethal subroutines amongst the more standard ‘trip the alarm’ kinds. The shock plates under a every few tiles in the kitchen are a nice touch.

He looks up from his place on the kitchen table at the soft sound of footsteps. Renee, when she turns the lights on, looks as soft as she ever does, flushed and rumpled like Neil’s pulled her out of a sweet dream.

“Neil,” she says, and, despite the gun he’s holding, smiles. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Neil replies. “Are you going to kill the president?”

“Oh,” she says, not surprised by the question but like she’s been hit by a bolt of understanding. “Would you like a tea or coffee?”

“Arsenic or cyanide?”

“Neither.” She crosses the kitchen, less uncaring of than she is polite about the weapon in Neil’s hand. “I understand that you have no reason to trust me, considering what you must have heard about me, but I hope you’ll believe me when I say I have no intention of hurting you.”

“I don’t care about that,” Neil replies, voice cold. “Answer my question.”

“Of course, I’m still trying to decide whether I can trust you,” Renee says, as though Neil hasn’t really spoken. “You may have heard all the rumours about me, but at least I’m not the known son of a serial killer who was involved with the biggest gangs on the Eastern seaboard. Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”

“I was born into it. We’re not guilty of the crimes of our parents.”

The look Renee gives him is less soft and more piercing. “You don’t do yourself any favours, did you know that?”

“Enlighten me.”

“You’re afraid of me. Rightly so, but it’s ironic, in a way. Because, for all the whispers about me, about the things I’ve done, the ones about you are just as bad. They call you a robot, did you know that? Half the agency thinks that you would be a rogue asset if not for Kevin Day. They think your loyalty extends to him and not an inch further, that you’re good at your job at the expense of all human emotion. They think you’re a psychopath. That you enjoy killing, and enjoy torturing people even more.”

None of that particularly surprises Neil. “How do you know they’re not right?”

Renee’s mouth quirks. “I’m not that stupid. You are very good at your job, but you aren’t a machine or a madman. Your loyalty just doesn’t look like other people’s.”

“What do you know about loyalty?”

“Most things,” she replies. “Since when did you care whether the president lives or dies? I know your loyalty isn’t to your country.”

“I don’t,” Neil says. “I’d be rogue if not for Kevin, remember? It turns out he cares about the President quite a lot.”

“It’s funny.” The smile twitches wider. “Hearing you tell the truth.”

“That’s not what I get paid for.”

“I suppose you’re not working now,” Renee acknowledges. “And neither am I. So I can tell you that whatever my orders, I won’t kill President Wilds.”

Neil doesn’t speak for a long moment. His heart begins to beat quicker in his chest. It’s one thing to suspect, another entirely to hear it even tangentially confirmed. “‘Whatever your orders’?”

“You know I’m not authorised to tell a third party my orders. It’s need-to-know.”

“I don’t suppose I could convince you I need to know,” Neil says.

“How about I tell you when you do need to know?” Renee’s expression is intent, pointed.

“Does that make you a double agent or a triple?”

“I try not to keep count. I know what you’re doing here, and I respect it. I won’t get in your way. You can consider me to be on your side.”

“You aren’t on my side.” No one is, not really.

“Neil. Of course I am. I want to do what’s right, the same as you do.”

“Stop talking.” This - this is how she gets to people, with her sweet voice and honest eyes, her words all truth and still poison.

“We could fight, if you prefer,” she tells him gently.

“No, you really couldn’t,” a voice interrupts. “I just repainted these walls.”

Allison Reynolds is holding a gun on Neil, wrapped only in a bedsheet. Neil has a brief moment of stupidly assuming that she won’t actually shoot him before realising he hadn’t heard her approach.

“You’re moving up in the world, Natalie,” he tells Renee.

“Haven’t you heard? I work for the president.” Renee’s smile is positively impish. “Sweetheart, please don’t shoot Neil.”

“If you knew who you had got into bed with, you’d be pointing that at her, not me,” Neil informs Allison.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Allison asks, though she sets the gun on the kitchen bench. “No, don’t answer. I can see from your face you do. But let me assure you, I know both Natalie Shields and Renee Walker far better than you do.”

No one should know that name, not even someone in Allison’s position. Neil doesn’t have much choice but to close his mouth - if Allison knows that, she’s either trustworthy or deeply compromised.

“Is he staying?” Allison asks Renee after a moment of silence. “I can make up the guest bed.”

Renee turns a questioning look on Neil. He shakes his head. “Not safe.” The thought makes his skin crawl.

“We wouldn’t-”

“Not from you,” Neil corrects. Fuck, he has no idea who he’s frightened of now, no idea where the next attack might come from, and that’s more scary than anything else. “I’ll go.”

Neither of them move to stop him, not physically. He’s nearly to the door when Renee says, “Neil. Something to keep in mind. You and I, Kevin - the three of us are all questioning our motives, our orders. Not just because of the president, either. That it’s happening now isn’t a coincidence. At least, I don’t think it is.”

Neil doesn’t say anything, but he hears it.

She adds, “Be careful. And keep Kevin safe.”

 

* * *

 

Neil thinks about it. Quietly, silently, he considers all of it, and still fails to make a conclusion on anything.

His history makes him want to believe the worst. His years at the Agency have taught him more level-headed consideration of the facts, but they’ve also made him more biased, more trusting. It’s impossible.

He goes to training, works with Kevin in the gym every day and goes to the range as well. He hears nothing from the Director at all, and nothing from Riko in regards to his audition. It isn’t surprising - what is surprising is that he isn’t placed on assignment, spending one week quietly in the city, and then another.

He catches up on some mindless television, buys groceries and actually manages to cook them rather than throwing them away after a surprise fortnight-long overseas assignment. It’s peaceful, but Neil isn’t used to peace. He itches.

It’s the Tuesday of his unscheduled semi-vacation when that peace abruptly ends. He gets a phone call summoning him the Office ‘as soon as possible’, which in this field means ideally, an hour ago. He pulls his boots on and goes.

The Office is unusually quiet when he enters, though he only notices that offhand on his way to the Director’s office. His secretary waves him straight through, and the Director is there waiting. Again, Neil has his attention immediately on entering, rather than a vague command to sit. It certainly adds to the impression of urgency.

The Director isn’t a physically imposing man - dealing with him overwhelmingly gives the impression of dealing with a ruthless and unyielding mind behind an impassive face, which is a far greater threat. However, as soon as he looks at Neil, Neil knows that he knows - something. Whether it’s just Neil’s indecision, or the specifics of his conversation with Renee, or with Dan, he knows something.

That’s why he isn’t surprised by what the Director says next, looking straight into Neil’s eyes.

“We’ve managed to capture one of the masterminds behind the attack on the president. Your orders are to find out what he knows, by any means necessary. He has been transferred downstairs in preparation for you.”

Neil is wearing street clothes, jeans and a hoodie. It shouldn’t matter - he’s worked wearing similar multiple times - but it’s still the first thing he thinks of.

Neil watches the Director back for a long moment, saying nothing. He wonders whether the Director expects him to accept this without a word, or whether he’s waiting for Neil to refuse.

“When I signed on with the Agency, it was with the understanding that I would not be committing acts of torture again,” he says, slow and even.

“And yet, you still have those skills - you can’t really have expected that we would never have need of them. Agents are the best of the best, and in this you truly are the best. When it comes to the safety of this country, sometimes our best are expected to make sacrifices.”

Neil has seen this coming, he realises now. Maybe not quite like this, but since the moment he was called in the Office after the attack on the president he’s known what it would come to.

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Neil asks, before his brain catches up with his mouth. His next realisation is that he’s angry, furious even, but he refuses to let a trace of that touch his expression or his tone. “A sacrifice?”

The Director steeples his fingers. “I always thought it was an unusual moral quandary for a man like you, at any rate.”

It’s not an issue of morality. It’s an issue of Neil’s stability. It’s an issue of a clean kill - over in an instant, usually painless when you’re as skilled as he is - and the dirtiest kind, blood and bone and words that are usually empty anyway. A hand-me-down ability that he’d rather forget, but can’t. One he left behind along with the name ‘Wesninski’. When the Director says ‘a man like you’, he really means ‘a man with your name’, like blood really runs that true.

It’s one thing, to kill a man. It’s another entirely to break one.

“Understood,” Neil replies, and it’s not even a lie. He knows exactly what’s being asked of him, and why. It boils in his belly, a low but implacable heat - this is not a dismissal of what Neil wants. It’s either a punishment or a power move, and either way it makes him furious.

He doesn’t let a trace of that show.

The Director looks at him for another long moment, and then glances back down to his desk. “Go downstairs. Agent Proust will brief you further.”

Neil goes downstairs. Proust, a rat-faced man in his late forties who Neil would hate on principle even if he wasn’t as generally unpleasant as he is, is waiting for him when he swipes his way through onto the floor. It looks a little like a hospital ward, or would if all the doors weren’t locked.

“Agent Josten,” Proust greets, and Neil somehow doesn’t smack the pleased expression off of his face. When he joined the Agency, Proust had been one of the most outspoken about recruiting Neil to his division, and he’d only relented when the Director assigned Neil as a high-level field agent. He’s probably ecstatic to see Neil here, and Neil despises that even more.

“Agent,” Neil replies, almost politely. “The Director said you would brief me.”

“Of course.” Proust leads him to one of the doors, through which a figure chained to a chair is clearly visible. It’s one-way glass, because of course it is. “This person worked intelligence for the attempted assassination on the president. We’ve got messages on their phone and laptop linking them to the assailants, and copies of the blueprints of the school that he apparently sent out.”

“Name?” Neil asks.

Proust shrugs. “No idea.”

Neil grits his teeth. “So do you have more useful information for me, or not?”

Proust looks taken aback by Neil’s tone, but he doesn’t comment. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“That, or the Director thinks you’re incompetent.” It’s not true, but Neil can’t resist saying it. He doesn’t give Proust an opportunity to reply, letting himself into the room and closing the door behind himself.

The room itself is typical - concrete flooring with a central drain, and a collection of hospital-esque furniture. The most obvious feature in the room is a table covered with metal instruments, placed so they gleam in the light. Second is the man restrained in a chair in the middle.

Neil is twenty-seven years old, objectively young for all he’s never felt that way. He’s older now than he ever thought he would be, and usually that’s a relief. Not right now, when he feels the weight of that like a sick drag on his bones.

The man in the chair is younger than him. Twenty-two, maybe. Probably younger. He looks frightened but has it under control, white-faced but steady, and when he catches sight of Neil he almost looks comforted.

Neil grabs a small stool, dragging it close and perching on it, giving the man a once-over. “What’s your name?”

There’s no answer. That’s not very surprising.

Lola Malcolm used to start with taunting, then moved on to a description of every thing she planned to do to her victims. Nathan, however, never valued what he called ‘teasing’, and always had an uncanny knack for saying what would frighten people the most.

Neil is better than both of them because he’s better at figuring out how people tick. There are people who talk before he even picks up a tool. There are people who talk within ten minutes of him starting. There are true professionals, who won’t say anything no matter what he does, or who will lie and lie and lie until they can’t talk anymore. There are the brave ones - they tend to break, in the end. There are people who think they’re brave until he shows them what pain can feel like, too.

It’s, at best, imprecise, unpredictable, and messy. At worst it’s a waste of his effort and someone else’s pain.

It’s only the unavoidable knowledge that if Neil were to stand and leave now, he wouldn’t make it out of the building, that stops him from doing just that. That, and that it wouldn’t save this man anyway.

He goes away. And then what’s left of him - the bones, the blood ( _Nathaniel Wesninski_ ) - goes to work.

 

* * *

 

The man in the chair doesn’t know anything important. He worked as a janitor at the school for eight months before being ‘let go’ for weed found in his car, which made the school’s online newsletter. The hostage-takers hunted him down and blackmailed him into sketching out blueprints of the building.

He’s not a co-conspirator. He was caught in the crossfire.

“Easy,” Neil says at the end of it, because it’s simple to be gentle to someone breathing their last, even a perfect stranger. “It’s okay now. You did well.”

He covers the man’s eyes before he cuts his throat.

When he leaves the room, Proust is waiting for him. He looks furious.

“He didn’t know anything of value,” Neil says with a shrug. He’s still - gone. He thinks that’s better.

Proust is bright red. “That isn’t your decision!”

“I was called in as a specialist,” Neil tells him. “That means that you defer to my expertise. If you have complaints about my methods, you can refer them to the Director.”

Proust goes past red, towards purple. “You insolent-”

Neil tilts his head like he’s evaluating. “Be careful.”

Proust doesn’t heed the warning. “You’ll be punished-”

“Fine.” Neil has never been particularly afraid of punishment, nor pain - he was raised on it. “It won’t be the first time I’ve been disciplined for doing my job.”

He turns and leaves Proust fuming, heading towards the locker room on this floor. The man in the mirror is deathly calm, eyes hooded and mouth relaxed. That man is a liar, but only half of one. He washes the blood from his hands and wrists, pulls his shirt away from his chest and examines the stains before tugging it over his head. There are new plain clothes folded in a cupboard, and he finds a long-sleeved shirt in his size and puts it on.

He’s coming back. He is intimately aware of his limbs, of how his heart is beating in his chest, of the still pond of his thoughts beginning to ripple.

He’s not surprised when he steps out into the hall to find six operatives waiting for him. They’re in black BDUs, liberally and visibly armed, though they aren’t wearing helmets.

“Agent Josten,” their spokesperson says. Neil doesn’t recognise him. “You’re to come with us.”

“Come where, exactly?” Neil asks.

There’s a small pause. Then the man who spoke before says, “Downstairs.”

Neil considers this for a moment, unmoving. He can’t say he’s particularly surprised. Apparently Proust has more weight than he thought - that, or the Director wanted to punish him anyway. Either is a possibility.

“If you resist, we will use force against you.” Like that would dissuade him.

“I’m not going to resist,” Neil says, gesturing ahead of himself. “Lead the way, Agent.”

They fall in around him, doing a good job of not looking nervous or expectant. Neil has absolutely no doubt that if he makes one unexpected movement he’ll be tazed into unconsciousness. They might not look nervous, but he isn’t stupid enough to think they aren’t.

Downstairs is Discipline: that’s what they call it, because apparently ‘the pit’ is too on the nose, even for the Agency. Neil follows them, meek as a lamb, and is unsurprised to find Proust and the Director waiting for him in front of a metal door at the end of a long hallway.

Proust looks positively gleeful. Neil doesn’t let it show on his face, but he’s already constructing his retribution.

They come to a halt, Neil’s honour guard parting around him. Neil looks to the Director and says, respectfully, “Sir.”

“Agent Josten. Agent Proust tells me that you have acted against protocol and disrespected him.” He stays quiet for a moment like he is waiting for Neil to deny it, but Neil doesn’t do so. After a moment he continues, “I must say that I am disappointed.”

Neil considers for at least a split-second staying silent. He isn’t done considering when he becomes aware of his mouth moving. “I think there’s a bit of that going around lately.”

“Excuse me?” The tone does not invite Neil to continue, but that doesn’t stop him.

“Disappointment,” he clarifies.

He’s not surprised when the Director’s cane impacts with his abdomen, driving the breath out of him. One second he’s standing, the next he’s on his hands and knees.

Over the sound of his blood in his ears, he hears the metal door sweeping open.

 

* * *

 

Sensory deprivation has never worked that well on him. Neil has always made very, very sure that no one in the Agency knows that.

It’s very dark inside, and very small. If he stretches his hands out in front of him he can touch the wall with his arms half-bent, and the same goes if he touches the ceiling hatch above his head. He’s sitting with his back against cool metal on an unpadded wooden bench - no food, no water, no bathroom breaks, no space, and no light. It’s an ugly way to spend time, and an effective punishment, but it won’t make him crack.

He can’t control the periodic way anxiety takes hold, but he’s logical enough that, while he can’t think away the fear, he can maintain reason well enough to not lose his mind - no screaming and clawing at the walls, at least. That said, he’s never done longer than 12 hours in Discipline.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He does know he can’t do anything except wait it out.

He thinks, for a while. About Dan Wilds, and about Kevin. About Riko. About Andrew sighting a rifle. About Nicky offering him easy access to his phone because he has no idea just how dangerous Neil is. About Aaron’s hatred. About Renee Walker. About himself and the concept of crossfire, how he thinks he’s walked into it at Kevin’s back.

He sleeps, but when he wakes he feels tense not knowing how long it’s been. Not panicked, but full of a stress that it’s hard to distract himself from. He doesn’t sleep again.

It’s not nice, but he’s lived through far, far worse. Though, Kevin has too by Neil’s reckoning, and Kevin would rather die than be punished in Discipline.

It’s been a while - probably - hours, maybe? - when the hatch above him is pulled open, but he gets just enough warning that he throws an arm over his eyes before he is blinded completely. He’s manhandled out by brisk, overly hot hands and dropped onto the ground. He has a split second to curl up before he’s blasted by ice-cold water from a high pressure hose.

He bears it. When the hose cuts off he’s dragged most of the way upright, quaking from head to toe, and carried somewhere else before he’s dumped again.

Footsteps recede, and he’s alone again. Knowing he’s probably being watched, Neil slits his eyes against the light and waits for them to readjust. Even going slowly, it sends a spike of pain through his head, though he suspects that might be partly due to dehydration.

As soon as he can see again, he examines his surroundings and finds himself in the deserted locker room on the floor above Discipline where he’d changed earlier - yesterday? The day before? He pushes himself up on arms that are still shaking and forces himself out of his drenched clothes and into clean ones. The old ones he leaves slumped on the floor. His belongings have been left on the bench, so he pockets them.

There’s no guards waiting for him outside, no one ready to usher him into the Director’s office. It becomes clear why when he steps out the front doors and realise it’s possibly the middle of the night, or maybe the early hours of the morning.

His mind is relatively sharp, but the rude shock of leaving Discipline means Neil’s body is on the edge of giving out on him. He turns his phone back on and calls Kevin.

The first time, it rings out. The second time, Kevin answers nearly immediately.

“Day,” he snaps, clearly failing to read the caller ID. For a highly ranked secret agent, Kevin is very bad at being woken up unexpectedly.

“It’s me,” Neil says, though his voice sounds so brutal that he wonders if Kevin will even recognise it for a moment.

“You’re out,” Kevin says, and then swears. “Jesus, at 3AM?”

“Sorry,” Neil says. “Not got my watch.”

“Not you,” Kevin replies, the sounds of movement on his end becoming more urgent. “Where are you?”

Neil blinks and actually looks, realising that he’s been absently walking along the street away from the Office. Apparently his brain isn’t quite as alert as he’d initially thought. He suddenly wonders if he’s hallucinating, and pulls the phone away from his face to check that he actually is on a call with Kevin.

“Neil,” Kevin is demanding when he puts it back to his ear.

“I’m walking,” Neil tells him. He’s frigid.

“What direction?”

Neil considers this. “South?”

“Fuck it, I’ll just track you,” Kevin says, though seemingly more to himself than to Neil. “I’m ten minutes out.”

“Okay,” Neil says.

Then Kevin pulls up alongside him in his plain car and jumps out, wearing a coat over sweatpants. Neil is surprised enough that he drops his phone, but Kevin catches it before it can hit the ground. Neil had forgotten he was holding it.

“I’ve been listening to your teeth chattering the whole drive,” Kevin says, and hangs up Neil’s phone before shoving both he and it into the passenger seat of his car.

The vents are blasting hot air, and Neil sighs in gratitude, holding up his blanched and blue-ish fingers to them. Kevin climbs into the driver’s seat and throws his coat over Neil.

“You’ve been walking around in just a shirt,” Kevin tells him tersely, looking irate. Neil shrugs and focuses on the pain of sensation returning to his palms.

He must pass out, or maybe fall asleep, because the next thing he knows he’s lying flat on his back, and he feels much warmer than he did before. He’s slow to open his eyes, scared of his retinas being seared again, but when he does the room is lit only by a single lamp. He’s on a couch, not a bed, and there’s an IV in the crook of his arm attached to a bag jerry-rigged to a decorative coat hook behind the couch.

There’s also a man sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch, who Neil briefly mistakes for Kevin before realising it’s a stranger and tensing.

“Abby,” the stranger says, “Your patient’s awake.”

There are footsteps from behind the couch, and a strange woman appears in Neil’s sightline, followed by Kevin. Kevin, upon seeing him, immediately says, “You’re safe. They’re fine.”

Neil doesn’t trust in much, but he trusts Kevin, so he relaxes his tension, though not his wariness. “Where am I?”

“My apartment,” the man on the coffee table says. “I’m David Wymack. And you are?”

The name consolidates into a memory - David Wymack is the father of Kevin, and of Dan Wilds as well even if not by blood. There isn’t much in the way of a physical resemblance between Kevin and Wymack, but they carry themselves in a similar way.

“Kevin wouldn’t tell us your name without your permission,” Wymack continues when the silence stretches. “Which is nice and all, but seeing as we’re introducing ourselves…”

“I’m Neil,” Neil says after moment. He could lie, but he just doesn’t.

“Okay, Neil,” the woman, Abby, says. She has a warm, calm voice. “I’ve got you on some IV fluids because you were very dehydrated, and you’re halfway done with that bag. I only did a very cursory examination of you otherwise, but are you injured at all?”

“No,” Neil replies. It’s even true. Kevin still gives him a dubious look. “Can I go?”

“I’d feel better if you waited until the fluid bag is empty,” Abby says, “But we won’t keep you here if you want to leave.”

“They won’t, but I will,” Kevin says. “It’s been three days since you went in, Neil.”

“Huh,” Neil says. He would say it didn’t feel like that long, but he doesn’t really know.

“Just rest for another half an hour or so,” Abby recommends. “Keep sleeping if you like. You’re safe here. Do you need another blanket?”

It’s the offer of sleep that sells Neil on staying. He’s only been awake and aware for five minutes, but he can already feel his energy fading again. He shakes his head no to Abby’s question and closes his eyes, doing his best to ignore the three of them so they’ll leave him alone.

It works, though not before he feels a palm hovering over his forehead, deliberating, before it’s pulled away. Then he’s asleep again.

The next time he wakes, Abby and Wymack are out of sight, and Kevin is sitting in an armchair across from the couch perusing his phone. He doesn’t look up at Neil, but after a moment he says, “Are you ready to go?”

Neil looks at his arm and discovers the IV has been removed at some point while he was sleeping. He says, “Sure.”

“I’ll drop you off.” Even for Kevin, he seems unusually brusque. “Sit up slowly.”

Neil rolls his eyes but does so, feeling his blood settle back the right place. All his things are still on him - he has a tender spot where his phone has been pressing into his thigh - but he doesn’t have a coat. Kevin sources him one from a bunch hanging by the front door, a virulent green and much too big for him but comfortably warm.

The drive back to Neil’s apartment is dead silent. Neil isn’t bothered by it. The only attempt at conversation made is when Kevin says, “Eat something plain or you’ll be sick,” from inside the car as Neil is climbing out of it. Neil grunts his agreement and then slams the door.

Upstairs, he does do as recommended, making some plain toast and tea from a dusty box he doesn’t remember buying at the back of a cupboard. The effort of making and eating that finally warms him the rest of the way through, and gives him back some energy at long last.

That’s when his phone rings. He considers ignoring it for long enough that it nearly rings off before he answers it.

“Neil, it’s Jeremy Knox.” The cop sounds unusually sober. “Are you in town?”

“Yes,” Neil replies. “What’s going on?”

“I need to get your opinion on something. Kevin’s, too, if he’s around,” Jeremy says. “I’ve got a shooting at one of the bars downtown – three bodies, no assailants or witnesses as far as we can tell.”

The adrenaline hits. Neil’s body tightens like a strung bow. “What bar?”

“Eden’s Twilight,” Jeremy says.

“I’ll be there.” Neil hangs up and then hits his speed dial.

 

* * *

 

He and Kevin pull up at the same time, waved through a cordon by a uniformed officer. Jeremy is waiting for them, standing in the typical ex-military pose out in front of the bar as he talks to a few techs.

Eden’s Twilight looks different in daylight, but it looks nothing like a place people have been brutally murdered – the doors are intact, though held open by the police staff going in and out.

“Stay outside,” Neil commands, quietly enough to keep it between the two of them. It’s not so much to spare Kevin as it is to control the scene if necessary, though Neil would be lying if he said the former wasn’t a bonus. Kevin nods his acquiescence, falling in beside Jeremy while Neil slides past.

Inside, all the lights are on, the floors and walls and ceiling dingily black under the fluorescents. It’s a little less undisturbed in there – there’s glass on the floor, the remnants of a bottle that was thrown, and it crunches under Neil’s boots.

The closest body to the door is clad all in nondescript black and flat on what’s left of their face. Half their head is gone – high calibre bullet at close range, directly between the eyes. He catalogues it in the cold place inside of him that is beyond fear and beyond dismay, and then grabs the feet of the body and rolls them over.

The corpse is already in rigor – they’ve been dead for hours. But, more importantly, the corpse belongs to neither Nicky nor the twins, being too pale to be Nicky and too tall to be either Minyard.

Neil stands abruptly and goes to the other side of the room. Neither of the other two bodies is behind the bar, instead in the open space of the main room. One has been shot in the neck - messy but effective - and the other centre mass, the latter having dragged himself across the floor a little way. Neither of them is familiar. The shots that have killed them look amateur, which means that either Andrew was under pressure, or he wasn’t the one to kill them.

That Neil doesn’t know any of them is not surprising, not least because one is missing their face. The city is full of people who do this kind of dirty work - Neil, being one of them, would know. They have no distinguishing marks, no IDs, no phones, nothing more than the weapons they brought here. There’s little chance their fingerprints will bring up anything on any databases.

He steps back outside, meeting Kevin’s eyes and shaking his head minutely. He isn’t imagining the whisper of relief that crosses Kevin’s face, and he knows that it’s barely a shadow of what the man is actually feeling.

“I don’t think I can offer you much insight,” Neil tells Jeremy when they draw level. “It doesn’t look professional. The one thing I can say is that I know the bar and these aren’t people that work here.”

“So which of the people who do work there do you think did it?” Jeremy asks. He says it easy, like a joke, but it doesn’t hold because his eyes are serious. Neil looks back and contemplates how much he might know. He’s a good cop, but he’s just a cop.

“Before you ask,” Jeremy adds, “I know Andrew Minyard works here, and I know what he can do.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Neil says.

“Sorry, I meant ‘extract information from you without revealing anything to you’.”

Kevin is frowning. “That’s restricted information.”

“You two aren’t the only ones capable of finding things out.” Jeremy grins. “I’m smarter than I must look.”

Well, that’s probably fair. Andrew was in the newspaper, after all. Neil says, “Unless it’s some kind of revenge attack, I really don’t know who would be after them.”

Jeremy gives him a look. “They’re criminals. Low-level ones, sure, but-”

“-I said ‘I don’t know’, not that no one definitely is out to get them,” Neil cuts him off. “I assume you’re also intelligent enough to check their apartment?”

To his credit, Jeremy takes that in stride. “I’ve got people checking it out as we speak, but we both know they won’t be there. What I want to know is, do either of you know where they might have gone to ground?”

“Why?” Kevin asks, brow furrowed.

“Even if they somehow weren’t present at the actual crime, it would be a hell of a coincidence if they weren’t involved. Checking that out is my job,” Jeremy points out, and then shrugs a bit. “They’re obviously in danger. Your friend might be a great shot, but that’s not all there is to staying alive.”

“We’re not friends,” Neil says. “Andrew is useful in his own way, but we’re not close, and this has nothing to do with us. So I’m sorry, but I don’t know how much more we can help you.”

“So you aren’t going be treading on my toes while I’m looking for them?”

“Not unless I need someone killed via sniper.” Neil shrugs. “I’ll call if I hear anything.”

Jeremy has been staring at Neil, but at that his mouth curls at the corners. “You’re talking a big game for someone who rushed over here when I called you.”

Neil shrugs again. “Call it professional courtesy. Are we done here?”

“We’re done,” Jeremy confirms. “Stay in touch.”

Neil salutes him and turns back to the cars, stopping just short of bodily pushing Kevin ahead of him. It’s not till they’re inside their respective vehicles and on the road that Kevin calls him and says over the phone, “Jeremy’s a good man. You could have cooperated.”

“Cooperated with what? Knowledge I don’t have?” Neil asks, tucking his phone between his ear and shoulder. Using his shadowy employer to get out of a distracted driving ticket is more difficult than it sounds.

“Just-” Kevin hisses out a breath. “You’re getting less and less trusting.”

“I just spent a ludicrously long time in Discipline,” Neil replies sharply. “Right now you’re lucky I’m not hiding in my wardrobe talking to myself.”

“You know Knox-”

“I know he’s a weak point. I know that the two of you are acquaintances, maybe friends, but he’s just a cop. If he knows too much I can guarantee that someone will take him, crack him, and then kill him and dump the body somewhere no one ever finds it.” Someone like Neil. He exhales through a red light, feeling twisted and out of sorts.

Kevin is silent for a long moment, and then sighs again. “Okay. Alright. I understand.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees.

“Where the hell did they go?” Kevin asks. Neil hopes it’s rhetorical, because he has no idea.

 

* * *

 

He parks in the lot for his building, gets out of his car, takes the elevator to his floor, gets to his front door, and stops.

The concept of gut instinct is bullshit, except for when it isn’t.

Neil looks down at his own door handle, feeling a tracery of wrongness shiver over him like a spiderweb. It doesn’t objectively look different to how it does every other day – it’s still locked – but he already saw an example today of how looking like it hasn’t been tampered with doesn’t mean much.

He slips his gun from its holster, letting the weight of it settle in his hand as he slides the safety off. His key slips silently into the lock and he slips through the gap at an angle and closes it behind him.

His hallway is dark – it’s half the reason he rents this apartment. He knows it better than his reflection in the mirror, and it’s an advantage as he stands against the wall and waits for his eyesight to adjust.

The figure at the other end of the hallway, blinded by the light from the landing, tenses for a moment but doesn’t attack. Neil says, “Hello,” because the shape of the silhouette is distinctly familiar.

He throws the light switch. There’s a huff, the exhalation that sounds like relief even though it’s really the return of a breathing rhythm to normal from the measured pace of a sniper. Andrew says, “It took you long enough,” as he pushes Neil’s spare handgun into the waistband of his pants.

“You’ll shoot your ass off doing that,” Neil notes. The relief that swells through him is dizzying, but he swallows it. “Are the other two here?”

“Unfortunately,” comes Aaron’s dry response from where he’s likely been huddled in the lee of the hallway turn. It’s the most defensible spot in the apartment, which means that Andrew has been here long enough to figure that out. “Andrew, sit down.”

Andrew doesn’t move. The interchange - as well as the fumbling shots on the bodies from the bar - are enough to clue Neil in. He says, “Are you injured?”

Andrew doesn’t reply. Nicky, voice a decent attempt at normal that still falls short, says, “He got shot in the arm. Aaron fixed him up.”

“I didn’t realise you had your first aid certificate,” Neil says to Aaron, unable to resist.

“I had two years of medical school,” Aaron snarls back.

Neil knows that from reading Aaron’s file, but he resists the urge to poke further. “I won’t bother checking your work, then.”

“Shut up,” Andrew tells them both, turning into the apartment and showing Neil his back in the process. Neil follows, brushing by Aaron and Nicky, catching him before he sits at the kitchen table with fingertips to his arm. He pauses obligingly, though not without giving Neil a pale-eyed look.

“Gun,” Neil says, hand out and palm up.

“Two isn’t enough for you?” Andrew asks, though he hands the weapon over easily enough. It’s skin-warm from being in his waistband. Neil fights the urge to unload it, instead putting it within easy reach on the bench.

“Two is plenty,” he replies. “You just don’t need one right now.”

“People are apparently trying to kill me.”

“I’m here now. Let me watch your back for a while. And, seeing as it’s probably not your back you’re even worried about, theirs too.”

Andrew doesn’t reply, which Neil takes as a dismissal but ignores anyway. He doesn’t need Andrew’s permission for something he was planning on doing anyway.

“Show me your injury,” Neil tells him. “In a competition between half-a-medical-degree and me, I can guarantee I’ve had more experience with bullet wounds.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to check his work.”

“I lied.”

Andrew huffs something which may or may not be the cousin of a laugh, but he does strip off his hoodie and then roll up the sleeve of the baggy shirt he’s wearing underneath it. The usual gap of skin between the everpresent armband and the shirt is covered with clean white bandages. Neil, after scrubbing his hands down, unwinds them carefully and saves them because he has no idea how well stocked his first aid kit is right now.

The wound on his bicep is a furrow rather than a through-and-through, though it’s deep enough to have damaged muscle and probably bled everywhere. It’s been well-cleaned and stitched up neatly. Neil rewraps it, careful not to touch skin, and says, “Looks good. I’ve got some antibiotics I’ll give you, these kinds of injuries get infected. Better safe than sorry.”

Andrew gives him a long look, flat but likely assessing. “We can’t stay here.”

“I know,” Neil replies. “I’ll find somewhere for you to go. Do you need something to eat? I’m going to make toast.”

None of the cousins want toast, but Nicky makes coffee that Neil eschews for another mug of tea. Nicky watches this and asks, “Have you got morning sickness or something?” Aaron sputters.

“No,” Neil replies, and doesn’t add anything else.

“Do you know who tried to kill us?” Aaron asks after a moment.

“Not so far,” Neil says. “No distinguishing marks and no IDs. The lab might be able to ID them during autopsy, but I’m not exactly in their loop.”

This is received stonily. Aaron looks pissed off, and Nicky afraid. Andrew, of course, seems unbothered.

“They’re dead now,” Neil says with a shrug. “I’ll make sure you’re situated somewhere safe until the cops manage to figure out who’s holding the reins.”

“The cops?” Nicky imbues those two words with an impressive amount of doubt.

“A cop,” Neil clarifies. “A smart one.”

“Sounds unlikely,” Aaron mutters.

“I have other things to deal with at the moment,” Neil tells them, because those things are hanging over his head like a guillotine. “But I’ll make sure all three of you are safe.”

“So we just have to stay here and wait?”

“What were you planning on doing instead? Andrew already turned your workplace into a crime scene.”

“It wasn’t,” Nicky starts, and then jolts as Aaron kicks him in the shin under the table. “Ow!”

Neil looks between the two of them. “What?”

Nicky, rubbing his leg and glaring at Aaron, doesn’t answer. It’s Andrew who says, “I can only take a third of the blame for that.”

“There was another,” Neil says, and then it clicks. “Ah.”

Aaron transfers his killer look from Nicky to Neil. “It was that or die.”

“Do you really think I care?” Neil asks. “I thought you were going to say there was a fourth person involved. That, I would have cared about.”

“So you don’t care if any of us kill people?” Nicky asks, in a very poor attempt at humour.

“It would be pretty hypocritical of me,” Neil notes. That, fortunately, does kill the line of conversation dead.

 

* * *

 

Neil, having slept for an unknown period of time earlier, finds when he tries to go to sleep that he’s messed up his body clock completely. In the early hours of the morning he gives up and slips from his bedroom into the kitchen.

He jerks a bit in surprise when he turns the light on and finds the room already occupied by Aaron, who throws his arm over his eyes, blinded and clearly not having heard Neil coming. Neil isn’t stupid enough to remark on this, going to the fridge without speaking.

He takes out a Brita jug, and opens the cupboard where he keeps glasses. “Water?”

Aaron doesn’t reply, so Neil just pours him one anyway. “Not a great time to go cold turkey.”

“Fuck off,” Aaron snarls, voice guttural. When his arm drops to the table, he looks pallid and sweaty and furious.

“I wouldn’t suggest casing any of your usual haunts to find a supplier though,” Neil continues, ignoring this. “You look quite a lot like this guy with a price on his head, and I doubt anyone gunning for him will stop to check for armbands first.”

“I know that,” Aaron snaps. “I’m an addict, not an idiot.”

“I’ve heard the first step is admitting you have a problem.”

Neil is expecting an explosion at that, but Aaron sucks in a breath through his teeth and then exhales slowly. “Did you want something in particular, asshole?”

“You need to stay here.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Why would I want to? I always wanted to stay in a one-bed apartment with three other adults.”

“You say that, but I know as well that you do that addicts might not be stupid, but they do get desperate,” Neil says. “Stay here.”

“I don’t want to die,” Aaron says. “So you’re probably in luck.”

“Touching,” Andrew says from the doorway, blinking at the light. Aaron ignores this completely, focussing on drinking his water instead.

“You should be sleeping,” Neil tells him. Considering the amount of blood he probably lost earlier, it’s surprising he’s up and about.

“The sound of yelling woke me,” Andrew replies, prodding at Neil’s coffee maker.

Which a startling screech of his chair, Aaron stands and darts in the direction of the bathroom. The door slams, deadening the sound of vomiting.

Andrew had spun to watch his twin, but he turns back to the coffee maker once Aaron is out of sight. He says to himself, “Hm.”

“Do you need help?” Neil asks.

“No,” Andrew replies, abandoning the machine for Aaron’s empty seat. “Your couch is a piece of shit.”

“I don’t have many guests,” Neil says with a shrug. His lifestyle isn’t exactly conducive to it. Also, he’s a little short on friends right now.

“Are you nocturnal?”

“Not usually,” Neil replies. “I spent three days in Discipline. It’s thrown off my sleep schedule.”

Andrew’s expression, always difficult to read, shows a tiny flickering adjustment that Neil translates as distaste. “Discipline?”

“They like that name better than ‘the pit’,” Neil says.

“I thought you were a perfect agent,” Andrew says. “What did you do worth punishing?”

“Killed someone the Agency wanted alive,” Neil replies, aware even as he says it that he shouldn’t, that he shouldn’t have said anything at all. It’s too late for that, though.

Andrew hums again. “How’s your job security looking?”

“I’m not sure I care,” Neil admits.

“Perfect agent,” Andrew repeats. “When did you stop?”

“Caring?” Andrew nods his confirmation. “I think… I thought the Agency was a new start. I don’t like fighting and killing, but it’s what I’m good at. If I don’t have anything else, I thought, why not do it for my country? But now…” The silence drags, Neil unable to find the words.

“You don’t know who your allies are anymore,” Andrew supplies.

“I don’t know who my superiors serve,” Neil says, not quite a correction.

“Don’t you? I would have thought you’d figured that out by now.”

“What?”

“Men like that serve themselves,” Andrew says. “Their own motives outweigh everything else. That’s why you need people like Kevin in power. He’s too stupid and noble to put himself first.” It’s clear he means ‘stupid’ and ‘noble’ interchangeably.

“Kevin is in power.”

“You and I both know he isn’t really. That’s why I’m here.” He gestures to the apartment around him. “What’s surprising is that you’re still alive.”

Neil says, “Surprising?”

“Nobility is the kind of trait that ends up getting a person killed. Kevin is alive because you aren’t noble, but you’re hardly immortal. Sooner or later, someone is going to realise that it’ll be a lot easier to get to him if they’ve gotten rid of you first.”

Neil tilts his head, considering this. “I’m hard to kill.”

“Sooner or later, someone will manage.”

“Will you miss me?” Neil quirks a smile as he asks it.

Andrew stares at him for a long moment, but doesn’t reply. Neil chuckles quietly, and says, “I’ll take that as a no.”

From the bathroom there’s a dull thud that sounds suspiciously like a body slumping onto tiles. Andrew stiffens, but relaxes a moment later when a low rush of cursing follows.

“That’s going to be a problem,” Neil points out.

“Not yours,” Andrew replies, coolly removed, and goes to presumably peel his brother off of the floor.

 

* * *

 

Eventually Neil does get some sleep, waking up after noon the next day. It’s not going to help with his sleep schedule, but he figures right now that that’s the least of his problems.

His phone is largely quiet - any stint in Discipline means a seventy-two hour stand down. However, he’s lying in bed and contemplating whether he can manage food with flavour when it rings.

“Kevin,” Neil greets, keeping his voice low.

“I don’t have any new information,” Kevin says in quick French.

“Where are you?”

“Working,” Kevin replies. “Hurrying up and waiting.” The universal phrase for sitting on your ass waiting for the bullets to start flying.

Neil sits up. “Without me?”

“You’re off, this couldn’t wait,” Kevin says. “Jean is with me. It’s fine.”

Well, it’s better than nothing. “Be careful.”

“I always am.” It’s a blatant lie, but Neil doesn’t call him on it. “How are things on your end?”

Neil considers his answer. “Interesting. I’ll fill you in when you’re back in town.”

He doesn’t want to communicate ‘our missing persons are currently in my apartment’ but he suspects Kevin can read between the lines well enough to recognise that the aforementioned ex-missing persons are the ones making Neil’s life interesting. Kevin says, “I’ll stop by when I’m back. You might be back at work by then, of course.”

“Depends how slow you are to achieve your objective,” Neil points out. “I’ll talk to you later. Don’t die.”

“I’ll do my best,” Kevin says, and hangs up.

Neil, unsettled and unsure why, gets up and heads to the kitchen in search of food that isn’t toast. Nicky is there scrambling eggs, and he gestures to Neil with the pot. “Lunch? Well, breakfast for you, but you know what I mean.”

“Yes please,” Neil says, and sets the coffee machine to make another pot. “Are you okay?”

Nicky’s smile, which had been as wide as ever, wobbles and then firms again. “Of course I am. Are you?”

“I’m fine,” Neil replies immediately, which makes Nicky laugh very quietly.

“We’re both great,” he says, and this time it’s his voice that wobbles. “No, don’t, it’s fine. I just - eggs. I’ll do some toast too, could you get Aaron up for me? He might be able to keep something down now.”

“Sure,” Neil says, and ignores that he’d rather deal with Aaron’s outright aggression than Nicky’s sweet-natured struggling. For all the ways that Nicky is hardened by his past, the ways Neil sees and recognises even if he doesn’t know most of what caused them, he’s likely never seen anyone die, and never had his life turned upside down quite like this.

He deserves better than dealing with this. He never signed up for it. Neither did Aaron, who is asleep on his belly on the spare bed, though he twitches awake when Neil enters.

“Nicky is making food,” Neil says.

“I’m definitely not hungry,” Aaron says, though he pushes himself over and up, blinking a little. He looks a little more hardy, like the immediate effects of withdrawal have faded a touch. The look he gives Neil is less irate than usual, more piercing - it makes him look very much like his brother.

He asks, “How much do you trust Day?”

“What?” Neil says.

“I said, do you _trust him_?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Because someone talked,” Aaron replies. “Someone knew about us. Not just Andrew.”

Neil looks at him for a long moment. Then he says, “Someone has known about you from the moment Andrew’s photo appeared in the paper. Probably before that.”

“That doesn’t explain why it’s happened now. It’s been months.”

“Gathering intelligence takes time. They might have been waiting, or they might have only just found you.”

“You can’t have it both ways - either they’ve known all this time, or they just found out. Either way, why now?”

“I don’t know,” Neil admits. He wishes he did.

“You aren’t asking the right question,” Andrew says from behind Neil, who jumps and curses at him.

“...what’s the right question, then?” Aaron demands after a moment, irritable either at being startled or in being caught talking to Neil again.

“You want to know ‘why’. Why now, why us. That doesn’t matter. You should be wondering ‘who’.”

“I already know that,” Neil says, quietly. “There’s a leak in the Agency. Someone sharing information with whoever was behind the attack on Wilds.”

Aaron opens his mouth, and then closes it after looking at his brother. Andrew is looking at Neil, his focus that of a sniper with a target, so intense Neil wonders how his skin isn’t peeling away.

“Is it a leak?” Andrew asks. It’s incredibly and unmistakably pointed.

“It has to be.”

“For a paranoid man, you are very bad at aiming your suspicions in the right direction. You and Kevin are exactly the same.”

Neil opens his mouth to retort, sidetracked, but it’s Aaron who speaks first. He’s looking at Neil. “He thinks it’s an inside job. No leak when everyone involved is a part of the Agency.”

“That’s impossible.” Even as he says it, Neil recognises that he sounds just like Kevin.

“You should be better at recognising your co-workers,” Andrew replies. “Like the one who tried to kill us at the bar.”

Neil pauses for a long moment. “You have photographic memory.”

“Yes,” Andrew says. “Technically, I met him before I met you. Though ‘met’ might be generous. He was a gofer for Kevin then. Maybe he’s been promoted since.”

“Okay,” Neil says, instead of _fuck_ , which is what he’s thinking. From the kitchen, Nicky calls, “Neil?” and he replies with a quick, “Coming!”

He turns back to Andrew. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would the Agency want to kill the president?”

“Do I look like someone who keeps up with politics?” Andrew asks with a broad shrug.

Andrew’s accusations about memory aside, Neil can remember Andrew’s meeting with Dan. He says, “Give it your best guess, then.”

“It’s not rocket science,” Aaron cuts in. “It’s the same reason political figures are always killed. To make a statement, or to shut them up, or a combination of both.”

“Okay,” Neil says again, which is when Nicky knocks at the door and says, “You boys aren’t fighting, right?”

Neil opens the door for him. “No. I’m coming now.”

“Ooooh-kay,” Nicky says. “Boys, breakfast?”

Neil steps around him and goes to the kitchen, serving himself from the pan of eggs on the stove. _To make a statement, or to shut them up_. Aaron, like his brother often is, is probably right.

 

* * *

 

Neil goes up to the roof once the sun has gone down, though he stays in the lee of some rattling air conditioning units to keep himself out of sight. It’s frigid, but the wordless noise is a welcome break from the bustle of four people in an apartment he’s used to living in alone.

He hasn’t been up there very long when the door opens and closes behind him, and Andrew says, “You’re still in sightlines.”

Neil inhales a taste of the other man’s cigarette smoke. “No one besides you could make that shot.”

Andrew hums. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Neil rolls his eyes, even though Andrew can’t see it. “I’ll take my chances.”

He’s half-expecting Andrew to leave then, but instead he comes closer, the padding of his boot soles on the roofing just barely audible.

“I’m surprised you’re taking it this hard,” he says, and sits at Neil’s side cross-legged. “You already suspected something was wrong.”

“There’s a gulf between suspecting corruption in a government body and finding out that that corruption involves political assassination.”

“Not according to history,” Andrew points out. “Corruption is corruption. You only care because it involves someone you care about.”

Neil looks at him, surprised.

“I’m talking about Wilds,” Andrew says.

“I care about you,” Neil says, and then curses himself. Well, he supposes it was probably obvious. He can’t think of anyone else he would shelter in his own apartment besides Kevin, never mind the accompanying family members.

Andrew pauses like he’s considering that, or perhaps waiting for Neil to take it back in embarrassment, but when Neil doesn’t speak he carries on like Neil hadn’t said anything. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“I want to know why,” Neil answers. “I can understand...why, in general, an organisation might act against their own leader. But I don’t understand why Dan, in particular.”

Andrew doesn’t reply, but he does wordlessly offer Neil a cigarette. Neil accepts it and the lighter once Andrew has lit his own. The first breath in is always a rush of memories, not a single one of them sweet. He exhales the smoke and the emotions in a rush.

“Why did you come here?” he asks after a long moment, voice stark.

Andrew exhales himself, slow and easy. His expression, when Neil risks a look, is more lost than sniper-sharp. Whatever goes on inside his head Neil isn’t privy to, though that doesn’t usually bother him as much as it does now, in the quiet.

“Loyalty,” Andrew says after a long moment.

“I’m a spy,” Neil replies. “The things I’ve done - loyalty? Mine, or yours?”

“I don’t expect you to understand it. You aren’t that smart,” Andrew says. “That said, I always thought I was smarter than this.”

Neil is at sea. “I don’t…”

“Understand?” It’s - mean, which Andrew isn’t usually, though it lacks any genuine bite. Neil would know.

That’s infinitely less surprising than the way Andrew uses his free hand to turn Neil’s face towards his own and says, so close they’re nearly lips-to-lips, “Yes or no?”

“No,” Neil says, the word fresh and unfamiliar on his tongue, exhilarating, but he’s still the one who closes the gap between their mouths.

Andrew kisses like the sky is falling. That’s the only way Neil can describe it. Like the world is ending around them and this is somehow the only thing the two of them can do during the countdown.

Then, Andrew leans back and breaks it. Neil tilts after him, wanting, but he’s restrained by Andrew’s fingers tightening on his jaw in warning.

“Is this a breakdown?” Andrew asks, his voice rough.

“...no?” His head is a mess, but he’s survived far worse.

Something in Andrew’s expression shifts, tightens. He lets go of Neil’s face, and Neil misses the touch instantly and surprisingly. Not as much as he misses Andrew’s proximity when the other man stands and steps back.

“Try for an answer I can actually believe,” Andrew says, grinding his cigarette under his boot, and then Neil listens to his retreating footsteps.

Neil presses his knuckles to his mouth. His lips sting.

 

* * *

 

Neil is used to hiding himself as necessary for jobs, but right now he doesn’t have the resources to hide three non-operatives, one of them injured, for any period of time.

It’s a sign of how desperate he is that he considers going to Knox, or to the fucking president herself. He stops himself before he does it, biting his lip and clenching his phone in his fist.

It’s not that he doesn’t have someone to ask. It’s that he doesn’t trust her. Still, it’s Renee Walker that he calls in the end.

She comes over that afternoon, dressed in neat pastels and a strategically-sized hat. Neil has no doubt that any cameras in the area won’t have captured her face. He ushers her straight inside and through the kitchen where the cousins are waiting in a sullen tableau at the table.

Nicky perks up when he spots Renee. “Hi!”

“Nicky, is it?” Renee asks, smiling warmly at him. “It’s lovely to meet you. And Andrew and Aaron, of course.”

The twins give her identical dubious looks. Neil doesn’t really blame them, but he also doesn’t bother to explain. They’ll either see through Renee or they won’t, but she’ll keep them safe either way.

Hopefully.

That’s when Neil’s phone goes off. He looks at it and says, grim even to his own ears, “Good timing.”

The four of them each give him looks of various levels of understanding, Nicky at the vaguely confused end and Renee at the other. Renee says, “We’ll move now then. It’s best if I split the group up, Andrew with me and then Neil and Nicky and Aaron.”

“I’m not coming,” Neil interrupts.

Renee gives him an intent look, but corrects herself. “Then just Nicky and Aaron.”

“No,” Andrew says. “They stay with me.”

Nicky looks warmed by this, Aaron surprised. Renee says, “We’re all more vulnerable travelling together. It’s not always safety in numbers.”

“Then you take one and I’ll take the other,” Andrew says. “Neither of them can fight worth shit. I assume you can.”

Renee smiles. “Hopefully it won’t come to that, but yes, I can. Nicky, will you travel with me?”

Nicky gives Andrew a slightly uncertain look, but when there’s no response he turns back to Renee and says, “Sure thing.”

Neil leaves them to organise the logistics between them, figuring the less he knows, the better. Then the cousins break away to collect the meagre belongings they managed to bring with them.

Neil, pouring himself a glass of water in the kitchen, is unsurprised when Renee slips in and comes to a stop beside him. She says, “Thank you for calling me.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” Neil replies.

“You’ve got a mission?” She taps her finger on the bench beside his phone.

“By the sounds of it.”

Her mouth twists a little, the skin between her brows pinched. “It’s terrible timing.”

“It’s been seventy-two hours and Kevin is on assignment.” Neil shrugs. “I’m not surprised.”

“Of course,” Renee agrees, though the tightness in her face hasn’t eased. “Be careful. Get in touch with me when you’re back.”

It’s hard, in a strange way, watching them leave. Neil should be relieved, but he doesn’t feel that at all, just the continuing tension of responsibility a yoke around his neck.

Nicky says, with that same wobbly smile, “See you soon, Neil.” Aaron says nothing. Andrew looks at him for a split second before he leaves the apartment.

Neil gives them a ten minute head start before he leaves himself for the Office.

 

* * *

 

He’s hustled into an SUV and then a helo almost the moment he steps foot in the building, besides the time it takes to change into his gear. This time it’s full BDUs in urban camouflage, harnessing across his waist and thighs so he can wear his weaponry exposed rather than hidden the way he usually does, and a flak vest.

When he joined the Agency he’d never worn this kind of gear or taken part in this kind of head-on confrontation with a team around him. However, he’s had more than enough time to adjust by now.

He takes the tablet his XO, Lopez, hands him so he can go over the brief and personnel list during the trip. There are a number of squads the Agency keeps and trains, like the Omega squad of Riko’s but a rank lower, made of agents of various areas and loaned out to specialists like Neil for ops. Command is another learned skill, and by now it comes easily, too.

The target is a warehouse located on the outskirts of a town in Ontario where an international mercenary cell is building weapons for sale overseas - particularly to the States. Neil reads background on the main players, what little information there is available on the warehouse itself, and the team on the ground collecting that information. He recognises the names - Parker, Monroe, Bowry - as the ones he worked with in Albania. At least here they can’t leave him in the lurch like they did last time.

Once his team is on a small jet headed north, Neil calls them in and briefs them on the operation plan. There’s six of them, not including Neil, and they’ll be taking separate sides of the warehouse in pairs, connected by radio, with Neil on his own. Hostiles are to be captured where possible, eliminated where not, and whatever materials are inside are to be secured for survey by a secondary Agency team. What happens to them after that isn’t Neil’s business, although he does wonder.

The team is easy and professional, taking Neil’s orders without a flicker of protest. He dismisses them to get into their chutes, shrugging his own on. That’s yet another thing he’s learned - Nathan Wesninski never made any of his employees jump out of planes.

His jump training with the Agency had been, in retrospect, insane. They’d packed him onto a plane with a bunch of ex-Military recruits and Kevin, who at that point Neil had only met in passing, and only given him a brief explanation on the process before he was expected to actually follow through.

It’s a small wonder he didn’t die, never mind walking away from it in one piece and with a new love for the crazy adrenaline rush.

The intercom clicks on, and the pilot says, “Approaching jump zone.” Neil hits the button to the rear ramp of the jet, and it yawns open to let in the savage roar of the wind and their speed. Lopez is doing chute checks and they’re all lining up in jump order. Neil, who will go last so he can see everyone during the jump and landing, does his own checks.

“Entering jump zone, T minus three,” the pilot says. “Three - two - one -”

Neil gives Lopez a thumbs up and watches her jog to the ramp and leap off, then makes sure the rest each keep a two-count between jumps. With a small target zone they need to make sure they don’t end up scattered across the Canadian countryside - or worse, city - but not jump so close they get tangled up.

It’s not until he jumps that he breaks out of his management headspace and into the sensation of freefall. There’s numbers scrolling through the back of his head, a reliable countdown, but the forefront of his mind is adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline. He’s never more alive than he is when he’s a single misstep from hitting the ground at terminal velocity.

Below him, the world is laid out, half town-lights and half the unforgiving blackness of nature. He falls.

It’s dark, but he can just make out his team by the reflectors on their backs in the moonlight. There’s a secondary part of his brain constantly counting them and monitoring their position, waiting for Lopez’s chute to open.

He’s three seconds into freefall when he sees it bloom below him, silvery and massive. The two second rule holds, as Lopez is followed by Arran and Taylor.

Neil’s headset has been quiet as they all count down, but that silence is broken by a sharp curse. Lopez says, “We’re taking fire from below.”

“Delay opening,” Neil replies instantly, “Lopez, Arran, Taylor, evasive measures, but don’t cut those chutes. They can’t be doing much better than firing blind.”

“Heat signatures?” someone says.

“That’s basically blind,” Arran replies. “They’re stabbing in the dark here.”

The three chutes spin out across the landscape below, cutting away from their trajectory and then back again. A moment later, Lopez says, “That’s put them off, but I think we can expect a warm welcome.”

Below, the other chutes open. Neil counts another two and releases his own, holding his breath as his momentum is forcibly arrested. It’s a hard drag of sensation before it settles into a slower fall, his control now reinstated.

He’s now close enough to the ground that he sees the muzzle flash from far below as whatever anti-aircraft weapon they’ve got is fired. He says, “We’re within range now,” pulling so he tilts out in a wide arc around their target. “Aim to land within a mile radius.”

“I fucking hate running,” Taylor jokes, and then grunts.

Neil knows that sound, and so do the rest of them - the channel lights up with half a dozen curses.

“Report,” Neil snaps, and gets nothing other than the sight of a single parachute failing to continue it’s arc, heading off in a straight line towards the darkness of the woods. “ _Fuck_.”

“Permission to follow?” Griffin, who is just below Neil, asks, though he doesn’t sound hopeful.

“Denied,” Neil says through his teeth. Just then there’s another wave of fire on them, and more cursing.

They may not be able to see the team, but it’s enough to know they’re out there somewhere - hitting one of them was luck, but if they fire enough they’ll get lucky again. They’re sitting ducks.

“Stick to the plan,” Neil says, and releases his chute.

There’s a breathless second where he seems to just hang, and then his own bodyweight catches up with him. Someone yells, but it’s a haze in his ears as he drops straight past the team and down.

The consequences of fucking up now would be calamitous. However, Neil doesn’t make mistakes, not when it really matters. He arrows his body down, watching the warehouse grow and grow in his vision.

He waits. Then he pulls his secondary chute, his teeth rattling with the force of it, and hopes like hell.

He doesn’t get shot - like he expected, the anti-aircraft gun isn’t maneuverable, or at least doesn’t move quickly. He does land fast and hard and right on target, skidding across the roof of the warehouse itself before shedding the chute behind him. The gun juts out in the centre, set up on a rampart and still firing, and Neil is absolutely sure this should have been in the briefing packet.

He takes a grenade from one of his belt pouches, pulls the pin, and heaves it over-arm at the base of the gun. Then, he ducks.

It’s not a huge explosion, but the firing cuts out. There’s a long moment, and then the barrel of the gun collapses away from the rest of it.

“Anti-aircraft weapon is down. You’re clear to land on the roof.” Neil says to the team. They don’t swear at him, which means they’re much more polite than Kevin - he just gets a chorus of ‘copy’s.

They land in tight formation a few moments later, weapons in hand, just in time to meet the people boiling out of the roof door. It’s terrible strategy on their part, forcing them through a bottleneck, and they seem to realise that. Unfortunately for them, it’s a little late. Only a couple of them make it to retreat.

“We’ll clear it from the top down,” Neil says even as he strides to the door, “Groups of two, we’ll take a quadrant each and meet at the bottom unless something goes wrong.”

There’s only the one roof access door and it’ll take too long to rappel down, so they take the stairs at a dead run and precede themselves onto the top floor with a flash grenade. It turns out there’s no one there to blind anyway. Presumably they’re gathered on the lower levels, which is where it would make sense to have weapons stored.

“Split up,” Neil says, and hears footsteps as the three groups of two peel away down the hall. Neil takes the northern quadrant, clearing offices and small workshops. It’s all empty, and the silence in his ear indicates the others are finding the same.

It’s a three-story building, though the ground floor is double-height at the southern end. Neil finds stairs at his end and slips soundlessly onto the second floor, clearing another couple of rooms.

“Anything?” he asks in a bare whisper, thankful the Agency invests wisely in their communication technology.

Of course, as soon as he thinks that, Lopez’s muttered, “Clear,” is cut off with a screech. It’s the sound of something going very wrong with a machine, and Neil winces as he fumbles his earpiece off. Fuck - scrambler. Apparently weapons aren’t the only thing they’re keeping here, if they’ve got something capable of turning a top comm system into a piece of scrap.

This is why the Agency insists on pre-op planning. Neil still feels exposed and disconnected not knowing what’s happening to his team, but he knows the others know their jobs. Sighing silently, he continues what he was doing.

He’s in an empty break room which has been repurposed into sleeping quarters - also empty - when he pauses. In that moment, he isn’t sure why, but later he’ll be able to say that he hears the sound of flames.

Gut instinct. Neil has lived this long by trusting it, and he doesn’t plan to stop doing so now.

He doesn’t stick around to hear more. He turns and runs.

The window is his best exit. Throwing his arms over his face, he dives for it boots-first, and it gives way in a hail of glass.

He’s on the second floor. He has a split second to curse that while he falls.

Neil hits the ground and rolls, nothing graceful about it. He loses skin, gains bruises, and comes to rest in the bottom of a drainage ditch on his back, in a couple of inches of what could be generously referred to as water.

He has a fraction of a second to be grateful he didn’t end up on his face in it before the building explodes.

The heat of it is sickening, drying his skin and pulling at the oxygen in his lungs. He’s far enough away - barely - to avoid any actual ill effects of the explosion, but he has to roll and curl up to avoid the rain of debris.

It doesn’t take a genius to add ‘fire’ and ‘weapons manufacturer’ and make ‘unsurvivable explosion’.

The shock of it nearly makes him perform roll call, but he remembers at the last moment that even if his teammates are alive to hear it, he doesn’t have his earpiece in. He shoves it back in, listening for a moment and finding the screaming gone, and then says, “Check in.”

There’s no answer. He exhales, packing the buzzing uncertainty and growing sickness down - _six gone in one swoop_ \- and focusses just on whether he can find any of them alive.

He pushes himself up to a crouch, taking in the inferno the warehouse is being swallowed by, and then backs off into the treeline. It’s slower going to circle the building that way, but safer out of sight. There’s a few stragglers staggering around, some of them badly burned, but no one Neil recognises. He avoids them and the open parking lot on one side of the building.

He doesn’t find anyone. He thinks his jaw is clenched tight, but he can barely feel it. Also, there are sirens just barely audible on the wind, which means he doesn’t have the time to wait.

He’s overlooking the parking lot, watching the small shocked clusters of people from the warehouse gathering and waiting for...something, when a dark SUV pulls up on the outskirts, away from the crowds and close to Neil’s vantage point amongst the trees. He’s not sure if it’s backup or some belated security personnel preparing to call their superiors with bad news. Either way, the muzzle of a gun is what emerges first.

Neil exhales a little when the figure holding the gun steps out, silhouetted by the flames, because he recognises the shape and gait as Parker. Ex-fil, then. He starts to move towards the car, considering calling out, but decides not to in case the unfriendlies see him. Not that they’re in any shape to do anything about him, by the looks.

He’s close when his headpiece crackles to life. When the voice comes, it isn’t one he’s expecting, and it isn’t echoed by the man twenty yards away from him.

“Neil, run. Now.”

Later, he’ll realise he doesn’t even pause to consider what Renee is playing at. He just runs, silent behind the crackle of the flames.

A hundred yards, two hundred, and he’s in the scrub, low to the ground. He hisses, “What the fuck?”

“I told you that I would tell you my mission when you needed to know,” Renee replies from the other end, voice calm but with a tracery of tension. “You were right. I was brought in to kill the president. I’m not going to do it - I never was. But she wasn’t the only loose end the Agency wants to eliminate.”

“What?” The Agency’s entire mission statement should be ‘tying up loose ends’. He doesn’t understand.

“They want to kill you too. The explosion was meant for you, and now they’ve sent a team to make sure the job is done,” she tells him. “So if you want to live, you need to keep running tonight.”

Until this moment, Neil still would have said, if asked, that he didn’t trust Renee. It’s not the realisation that she’s interfering to protect him that makes his answer in this moment different though - it’s that, with the cousins relying on her for their safety, Neil realises it’s too late to do anything other than trust her, utterly and completely.

“I understand,” he tells her, and suddenly he’s not confused anymore. He’s calm.

Neil has learned what the Agency had to teach him, and he’s learned it well. But there’s more to him than due process and a black belt in Krav Maga. There’s more than a hitting bullseyes in the range, and telling his neighbours he works in security.

Underneath all that, there’s still Nathaniel Wesninski. Nathaniel is plenty of things, but foremost is that he is a survivor.

His weapon is somewhere back in the inferno. His comm he pulls from his ear and crushes in his fist, dispersing metal as he limps through the trees. The rest of his gear he can dispose of in the next town once he’s picked up replacements. He hasn’t got any ID, but it won’t be hard to get something that looks real enough.

Maybe they’ll assume he’s dead. Maybe they won’t. This isn’t Neil running, not really - it’s a ‘fuck you’ to the Agency, the same thing he’s said to everyone else who pretended to be on his side and ended up trying to kill him.

He doesn’t hide from the security cameras. He figures it’s fair warning.

Then, he goes dark.

 


	3. CAPTIVITY

 

 

Renee’s safe house is dark and quiet. It’s still not that surprising that there’s movement in the living room, with the blue-bright flickers of a muted TV just barely visible at the window. Andrew is an indistinct lump on the couch, only the line of his jaw and the rumpled fall of his hair illuminated.

“You were right,” Neil says. Andrew doesn’t jump.

“I usually am,” is the reply, low. “Come here.”

Neil comes closer, into the semi-light, though not close enough to touch. He hurts, skin-sour, and he doesn’t trust even Andrew not to touch him right now. He lets Andrew look his fill, though.

“You’re in less pieces than I thought you might be,” Andrew says after a moment. “You’re a wanted man, did you hear?”

“I haven’t been keeping up with the news,” Neil replies. “Guess I’ll have to wait for that to die down before my next job.”

“I think your employment might have been terminated.”

“There are always more jobs for people like me.” He shrugs. “Mindlessly following orders is a valuable skill. Maybe I can work for Amazon next.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. There’s always bouncing at your local club.” Andrew points to the ground directly in front of the couch and him. “Here.”

Neil obliges him. He’s limping, but it’s not bad - a minor twisted ankle he thinks he got in the explosion, not that he felt it until later. He cleaned up pretty well in a gas station bathroom, and his hair is dark brown now, but he still looks a bit like he got into a fight with a mountain lion.

He considers standing there, but it feels wrong to loom over Andrew like that. It’s possible that his brain, now that he’s here and inside and sheltered, is finally giving up on him, because the next thing he knows he’s on his knees.

This, of everything, seems to make Andrew pause. Not for long, though.

He hovers a hand over Neil’s hair. “Yes or no?”

Neil considers this for a long moment. Then he says, “Yes.”

Andrew takes him at his word, pushing his fingers through Neil’s hair. It takes Neil a moment to realise he’s looking for injuries to his skull, not doing it purely for comfort. This, somehow, makes the itching uncertainty ease out of his skin, leaving quiet stillness in its place.

He sighs, a long emptying out. The next inhale is infinitely easier. He mumbles, “No concussion.”

Andrew ignores this, checking Neil’s neck and then the cuts and bruises exposed by the oversized ‘I Love Toronto’ shirt Neil is wearing. He pulls at the hem of the sleeve, a wordless demand, so Neil strips it off and then lets his hands fall back into his lap.

His chest looks disastrous, blue and black across one side from his fall, but it’s not as bad as the colours suggest. Andrew skims a hand over them, prodding lightly at his ribs, until Neil says, “Didn’t realise you went to med school too.”

“I’m familiar with broken ribs,” Andrew replies, voice low, and then tilts Neil’s head up with a hand so he’s looking at Andrew’s face rather than staring blindly at his chest. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil replies, this time without pause, and when Andrew kisses him it’s welcome, welcome, welcome.

The sensation of Andrew half curled over him is the safest Neil has felt in days, maybe longer. The feeling is unrealistic, but right now he’ll take it.

He’ll more than take the kissing - it overtakes him, burns all the doubt out of him, gives him nothing to think about beyond where the two of them touch. It’s only their mouths and Andrew’s hands at his jaw and the back of his neck, but it feel like more.

There’s no abrupt end this time, just a gradual slowing. Neil feels hot all over, but more than anything he feels filthy.

“I need a shower,” he murmurs eventually, half against Andrew’s jawline.

“You do,” Andrew agrees, and then pushes Neil back off his knees and onto his ass. It seems a little rude, but it gives Andrew room to stand, and he does at least offer Neil a hand up. He needs it, his feet prickling with pins and needles and his bad ankle unstable under him.

He lets himself be led to the bathroom, and it’s pretty nice for a safehouse, plenty of room. He turns the shower on as the door closes behind him, skinning his pants off. It’s not until he catches a flicker of movement in the mirror he realises that Andrew has closed himself on Neil’s side of the door.

Even if he was in a position to care, Neil wouldn’t. Instead he sticks a hand under the water to check it’s scalding hot and then climbs underneath it. It’s heavenly, even though it stings his cuts a little. He lets it pour down his front, head tilted back so it misses his face.

There’s a bump at his chest as Andrew sticks his hand in to, apparently, check the water temperature himself. He adjusts the control a touch, cooling the water, which Neil ignores entirely.

Him climbing into the shower behind Neil does earn Neil’s attention, but only briefly and only because Andrew has stripped his shirt off but left on his jeans and armbands. Neil checks that he’s taken the knives that he keeps in them out - it won’t hurt them, but it’s the principal of the thing - and then ignores him in favour of fumbling with the bottle of body wash.

Andrew steals it from his clumsy hands, and a moment later his hand swipes across Neil’s back, half warm skin and half cold gel. Neil sighs and lets him, noting how careful he is to keep the gel off the abrasions he can feel on one of his shoulder blades.

“Thanks,” he says when Andrew prods him into turning around. When he wobbles a little on his feet, floppy with the warmth, Andrew takes his hands and raises them to his own shoulders. He feels impossibly sturdy and this entire situation impossibly intimate, but Neil likes it. He likes it enough he tilts his head down in a request for a kiss that Andrew obliges before he focuses on washing Neil’s front.

The washing devolves fairly quickly into more kissing, and Neil likes that even better than the last of the fear-sweat-ditch-water-smoke smell he’s been carrying for days. He sinks into it, and only jerks a little when Andrew’s hand, which has been tracing the curve of his hip in slow not-quite-ticklish sweeps, curls around his dick.

“Mm,” he half-says, all wordless want. He means _yes_ and he knows Andrew knows it because he doesn’t move back, instead starts jerking Neil off firm and painfully slow.

Neil keeps his eyes closed, just focussed on feeling the twin sensations of Andrew’s hand and mouth. It’s so good, so different to all the different levels of awful things have been for days and weeks, and it doesn’t surprise him when he doesn’t last long even with Andrew moving like a determined metronome.

He gasps as he comes, breaking the kiss and pressing his breath into Andrew’s throat. He doesn’t miss the way Andrew shivers at it, following it with a light series of kissing, just pausing there.

When Andrew speaks, his throat buzzes against Neil’s cheekbone. “My room is across the hall.”

Neil heaves another sigh but takes that as the dismissal it is, stepping out of the shower and taking the folded, presumably clean towel from the vanity and winding it around himself. His legs aren’t any more steady now, but he’s still soundless as he slips out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.

There’s a neatly-made queen bed dominating the space, and Neil eases himself onto it for just a moment.

The next thing he knows, there’s a soft weight impacting his chest and jerking him out of sleep. He slaps at them and then recognises them as clothes. Andrew, already dressed in sweatpants and shirt, murmurs, “You left a damp patch.”

“I’m tired,” Neil grumbles, but he does push himself to unwind the towel from his hips and get dressed in borrowed sweatpants and an undershirt. He doesn’t flinch when Andrew roughly scrubs the towel over his hair, getting the worst of the water out. Then he crawls under the blankets that Andrew’s pulled back for him, eyes already closed.

His head touches down on the pillow, and he’s out.

 

* * *

 

“Andrew, are you alive? Because I think someone’s broken in and left us a tacky tourist shirt, and if they killed you while they were here I’m going to be pissed.”

Neil jerks awake at the voice through the door, groping under the pillow for the handgun he stashed there. He manages to hit Andrew’s arm instead.

“Sorry,” he mutters, though it’s partially drowned out by Andrew’s rough, “Fuck off, Nicky.”

“Is it your shirt?” Nicky continues. “It looks about the right size, but it’s not your style. It’s not _anyone’s_ style, God.”

“It’s mine,” Neil says, which makes Nicky squawk and jerk the door open. He clearly thinks better of this because he swings it most of the way closed immediately, so all Neil can see is a wide brown eye through the gap.

“Neil!” he yelps. “Oh, thank God.”

“Hi Nicky,” Neil replies. “Go away.”

Nicky obliges. The door isn’t much of a barrier to his sudden and borderline hysterical laughter, though.

Neil flops back onto the mattress, rolling to face Andrew. All he can make out is messy hair and one closed eye, but he knows Andrew is wide awake.

“I need to get in contact with Renee and Kevin,” Neil says.

Andrew exhales, and then rolls over, groping on the bedside table. When he rolls back over he has a phone in hand - a new one, so probably secure. Neil takes it and a hoodie from the bedroom, padding barefoot out of the front door and perching on the front stoop. It’s bitter cold, but he’s still carrying the warmth of the bed, and it’s worth the privacy.

Kevin’s phone rings and rings, and then flicks over to his answer phone. Neil curses under his breath and tries again.

This time, there’s an answer. Kevin hisses, “You aren’t supposed to be calling me whenever you get bored, this is a protected-”

“It’s me,” Neil cuts him off.

“Jesus fucking Christ, that’s worse,” Kevin says, though he sounds relieved amongst the annoyance. “Hold on.”

“It’s not at all suspicious that you swore at someone and are now running to get out of earshot,” Neil comments.

“If anyone asks I’ll say it was Thea.”

“If you spoke to Thea like that she would kill you,” Neil tells him. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Kevin replies. “Are you out of your mind?”

It occurs to Neil then that _Kevin doesn’t know_.

“Kevin, you should leave,” he says. “Leave town, leave the country. You can’t - are you there right now? At the Office?”

“I’m travelling back from an op - what the hell is going on? First I hear you’re missing suspected dead in an explosion, then I hear you’ve gone rogue, and now you’re calling me and telling me…”

“Do you trust me?”

There’s silence for a moment. Some would find it thoughtful, or maybe telling, but Neil knows it’s just surprise. Kevin says, “Of course.”

“Then listen to me when I saw you have to get away quickly and quietly, and I’ll explain everything to you as soon as I can.”

“Fine,” comes the reply. “But you’re coming with me.”

“I can’t.” There’s so much Neil has to do.

“Then meet with me - pick a place, I’ll come alone. But I want to hear it, and I want to help if I can.”

“You can help me by not getting killed!”

“No one is going to kill me.”

“No one was going to kill the president, until they were,” Neil says. “Fine, I’ll met with you. Somewhere neutral.” The phrase is pre-arranged. The ‘neutral’ location is a strip mall with shitty security in DC. “You’ve got twenty-four hours.”

“I could be in Botswana for all you know.”

“If you can’t make it anywhere on the planet within twenty-four hours then you’re slipping and deserve to get murdered. See you soon.” Neil hangs up. He really had been hoping Kevin would just go, but he’s not surprised that he wants to be involved. He probably won’t like it so much when he hears the truth, though.

Renee’s number is pre-programmed into the phone, and she answers on the second ring with a gentle, “Andrew?”

“It’s Neil,” Neil replies. “Are you nearby?”

“Not right now,” Renee says. “Me being close isn’t precisely safe right now.”

“You’re still with the Agency?” That seems unwise.

“I work for the president,” she reminds him primly. “They wouldn’t dare move against me yet. I’m being watched, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come if you need me.”

“I won’t stay long. I don’t want to paint a target on the roof. Just wanted to check you’ve got things under control. And to thank you for the save.”

“You would have done the same for me,” Renee replies, which is extremely generous of her. Whether it’s true or not, he isn’t even sure. “There’s a spare go bag stashed in the house - take it with you. You should have everything you need in there.”

“Thank you,” Neil says, and then, “How did you know?”

“I had my suspicions,” she replies. “They were easy to confirm when I investigated the team on the ground.”

“So all of it was planned,” Neil says. What he feels isn’t grief, not quite - it’s just an understanding of what was wasted. “Just to get to me.”

“I’m not sure,” Renee says, though it sounds more like it’s meant to be reassurance than anything else. “All I know is that Parker and the rest were meant to ensure you didn’t make it home.”

“I’ve been out with them before alone. They could have finished me then.”

“Neil, I don’t know. What I do know is that you need to stay out of their hands until we can finish this.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Neil’s been thinking about it throughout his whole trip south and he hasn’t come up with anything yet.

“You just need to stay alive,” Renee says. “I’ve got parts of the puzzle, just not all of it. The peril of working in the intelligence system is that it’s very hard to get the full picture even from your allies. I assume your next move is to secure Kevin, and that’s what I want you to focus on. The rest we can figure out afterwards.”

“I can do that.” It feels strange to take orders from Renee, but she’s his safest bet at the moment. It helps when she orders him to do something he was going to do anyway. “We’ll talk once he’s safe.”

“Goodbye, Neil,” she says, and hangs up. Neil sighs, pressing the skin-hot screen to his forehead for a moment.

A mug is placed by his elbow. Neil takes it, inhaling coffee for the first time in days. When you’re running with just the clothes on your back, you prioritise water over caffeine, but fuck he’s missed it.

“They serve the good stuff around here,” he says.

“Come inside,” Andrew tells him. “You can’t afford to be brain dead from hypothermia.”

Neil chuffs a quiet laugh but does as bid. His feet appreciate the warmth at the very least. Unfortunately Aaron and Nicky are waiting in the lounge, their faces expectant.

“Good to see you alive,” Nicky chirps.

“Good to know why you’re actually going to all this trouble,” Aaron says, looking between Neil and Andrew.

“‘This trouble’ as in, keeping you safe?” Neil replies coolly. “You’re welcome.”

Aaron sits forward on the couch, back stiffening. He looks different now, actually - clearer, the anger brighter on his face. “We wouldn’t be in danger if it weren’t for you.”

“You’ve been in danger since the day you were born,” Neil replies, “And the decisions you’ve made since have compounded that. If you wanted to stay safe, you should have stuck with med school.”

It’s a little mean - he’s perfectly aware that Aaron dropped out because of money, turned to dealing because of money, and narrowly avoided selling himself before Nicky and Andrew just barely hauled him out of that pit and up a couple of echelons. Neil doesn’t care, though.

“As far as I can tell, we nearly got killed because you dragged Andrew into some kind of insane political melodrama involving _the President of the United States_ , and the only reason you bothered to offer us shelter is because you want to fuck my brother!”

“Aaron,” Andrew says, an unmistakable warning.

“I offered you shelter because I didn’t want any of you to die,” Neil says, and then smiles. “Fucking your brother is just a side benefit.”

Unsurprisingly, Aaron lunges at him for that. He’s quick and comes straight over the coffee table, ignoring Nicky’s shout, but Neil, even injured and tired, is faster.

He has Aaron on his belly on the floor before he knows what hit him, a knee solidly planted in the middle of his back. “That was stupid.”

“Fuck you,” Aaron snarls.

Neil shakes him firmly by the back of the neck. “Listen. Whoever tried to kill the three of you is ten times as desperate to get rid of me, and they’ve come pretty fucking close. I don’t care if you don’t trust me or my motivations. I don’t care if you’re pissed I slept with Andrew. All I care about is that you stay alive, even if you’re a pain in my ass, and you’re just going to have to deal with that. Do you understand me?”

There’s no response, but Aaron’s back is still jumping with anger. Neil shakes him again. “I said, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Aaron grinds out, and Neil lifts himself up and steps away. Aaron waits a moment before pushing himself onto hands and knees and then getting to his feet. He retreats pretty quickly, followed by the sound of a door not-quite-slamming down the hall.

“Uh, I should,” Nicky starts, pointing in that direction.

“Give him a minute to cool off,” Neil advises, flopping onto the couch.

“He shouldn’t - it’s not your fault,” Nicky says. “I don’t think he likes being stuck here.”

“He’s angry and looking for someone to blame,” Neil replies. “It’s probably best that it’s me. Besides, I can’t stay here long.”

“You’re leaving?” Nicky’s face creases up genuinely. Seeing it makes Neil uncomfortable, because that kind of emotion isn’t meant for him.

“There’s still work to do,” Neil tells him. “I have to be back in DC in twenty-four hours, and I won’t be taking the direct route, so I’ll need to leave tonight. That reminds me, Renee said there’s a spare go-bag for me stored here.”

“It’s in the bunker,” Nicky replies. When Neil blinks at him, he grins. “Oh my God, you have to see this.”

He leads Neil into the hall and to a closed door that looks like all the others. However, when he opens it he reveals a set of stairs leading down into a basement. The door at the bottom is steel.

“We can’t figure out whether Renee put this in herself or whether she bought the place off one of those doomsday weirdos, but it’s amazing,” Nicky says gleefully, turning a wheel to open the door. It looks like something from a submarine. “It’s an actual real bunker.”

“Huh.” Talk about pre-planning. Neil wonders how long Renee has owned this place. The bunker itself is concrete-walled with only the one door. There’s a stack of crates in one corner full of what looks like canned food and bottled water, and a screened-off corner that presumably hides a bathroom. There are also four duffel bags in the middle of the floor, and a couple of weapons cases beside them.

Neil rifles through one of them to check the contents before slinging it over his shoulder. From the weapons, he takes a replacement handgun and shoulder holster as well as ammunition. His knives he still has tucked into the lining of the cargo pants he picked up on the way here.

When he glances up, Nicky is looking at him oddly. “I always forget…”

“Forget what?” Neil asks.

Nicky shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Are you sure you’ve got everything you need?”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Except for some more coffee.”

“Well, that I can do.” Nicky grins.

 

* * *

 

He waits until the sun goes down before he gears up properly, rechecking his supplies and storing them how he wants them in the bag and on his body. It’s a relief to feel properly armed again, even better to feel well-fed and passably rested.

“You’re going to walk?” Andrew asks from behind him. Neil has taken over his bed to sort through everything, though it’s mostly repacked now.

“I’m going to hitchhike,” Neil corrects. “Lots of freight trucks pass through, and it’s easy to catch a ride depot-to-depot. More anonymous than the bus - truck drivers don’t talk.”

He zips the duffel closed and hefts it over his arm. “Okay. I should go.”

When he turns, he expects Andrew to step back, but he holds his ground. It puts them toe-to-toe, and Neil feels a frisson of surprise before it dissolves into warmth.

Neil pushes his fingers into the hair at the back of Andrew’s neck and kisses him, brief but feeling. Andrew’s expression doesn’t give anything away, but that he’s here right now does.

Aaron doesn’t appear to see him off, but Nicky gives Neil a hug, strange but nice. Then, Neil trots down the steps and into the darkness outside the reach of the porch lights.

The house is suburban, the streetlights sparsely placed and glowing orange. Neil is the only person out at this hour besides a few post-work dog walkers and runners, and none of them give him half a glance. It’s a six-mile walk to the depot where he arrived in town in the early hours of this morning, but it feels like an easy trip with a full belly.

He’s halfway through the second mile when he catches the low thrum of an engine at the edge of his hearing. For a moment he thinks it’s one of those idiotic modified cars, but then the sound, a clear pulse, gets louder and louder.

Helo, moving fast and low. Neil curses under his breath but doesn’t do anything - there’s nothing more suspicious from the air than someone running through backyards.

The sleek bird darts over his head with a roar, heading back in the direction Neil has come from. Before he thinks about it, he pulls out his phone and calls the number of Andrew’s new phone.

“Is that a helicoptor?” Andrew asks as soon as the line goes live.

“Either run or lock yourselves in the bunker. You’ve got minutes,” Neil raps out. “They might not be there for you but-”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Neither,” Neil grits. “Don’t die.”

Andrew says something, but Neil doesn’t hear it over the sound of another engine almost on top of him. This time it’s a car, at least, but that’s no comfort when it brakes alongside him.

Neither is the figure that jumps out of the passenger door. It’s liberally armed, and familiar, and followed by several others.

“Neil,” Riko says, his smile gleaming. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Neil doesn’t have any chance to run.

 

* * *

 

He comes to in a basement. It’s not a basement that he recognises, but that’s not saying much. One of his eyes is glued shut with blood and his head is killing him, and basements are hard enough to identify with two good eyes.

He’s also not alone. He’s tied to chair - unimaginative - and there’s another chair facing him a few yards away. Jean is sitting in it, gun in hand.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Neil says in French. He sounds like he’s been gargling bleach. “Where’s Riko?”

Jean doesn’t reply, unsurprisingly. He looks odd and Neil considers whether it’s a matter of circumstances - Neil is technically at his mercy, after all - but eventually has to concede that it’s all Jean. He’s not charismatic, not really, but there’s usually an intensity to him that he seems to have misplaced. It leaves him looking shrunken.

Neil isn’t feeling very fond of him right now, considering the gun, but he’s not pleased by that either.

Jean looks at his watch. “He’ll arrive in due course.”

“Cool,” Neil says. “I love waiting. I’m surprised he hasn’t replaced you yet, you know that? I thought you were on the way out.”

He’s expecting Jean to ignore him. Instead, Jean smiles crookedly. “It became hard to justify that after I flattened the only replacement he was interested in into the floor.”

Neil shrugs, though it’s difficult while he’s restrained. “Well, you’re better than me. You’re better than him, too, of course.”

That makes the smile drop off. “Shut up.”

“Not my strong suit,” Neil says. “Are you going to untie me?”

“Not a chance,” Jean replies.

“I need to piss.” He doesn’t, but it’s worth a try.

“Go right ahead.” Or not so much.

“Inhumane. I’d say I’m surprised, but I guess I’m not.”

“You’re the only person I know stupid enough to think that working for an organisation that utilises torture even though you personally refuse to do so isn’t blatant hypocrisy,” Jean bites. It sounds like he’s been holding onto that one for a while.

“Don’t hold back. Tell me what you really think,” Neil encourages.

“I think you’re an idiot who has been blind to who you’re really working for just because your partner is the esteemed and wonderful Kevin Day.”

“And I think you’re probably right. After all, you’ve known all along, haven’t you?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Just weak.”

Jean smiles humourlessly. “If you say so.”

“You know, when I was in your situation, I killed the man holding the leash,” Neil says. He doesn’t think about it often, but when he does it’s all blood and satisfaction.

“Your father,” Jean says, not a question. “I’m not you.”

“No,” Neil replies. “And you’re not tied to a chair. So I guess I can’t criticise you.”

The door at the top of the basement stairs swings open, admitting a figure against the light, and then swings closed. Jean doesn’t turn to look, but Neil watches Riko down the stairs.

“Hello, Neil,” he says as he rounds Jean’s chair and stops in front of Neil’s. “I finally got rid of your friends.”

The fear Neil has been holding distant at the back of his head explodes. The helicopter, Neil’s too-late warning. He swallows it down.

“So where are they then?” he asks.

“Ashes,” Riko replies. “A few missiles - there’s not enough of the three of them left to fill one whole body bag.”

Neil’s stomach rolls. “I think you’re full of shit.”

Riko’s smile tilts into something harder. “Do you?”

“I know you,” Neil reminds him. “If they were dead, you would have brought that bag full of shreds and shown it to me. Did they run?”

“Your faith in two civilians and an ex-gangster who can by some miracle shoot is precious, really,” Riko says. “I told you. They’re in pieces.”

“And I told you,” Neil replies. “I’ll believe you when I see it.”

Riko shrugs. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. It shouldn’t matter to you anyway - you’re a dead man.”

Neil looks down at himself carefully and then back up, quirking a brow. “Still looking pretty lively to me.”

Then there’s a hand around his throat, forcing his head back into the chair and sealing his trachea closed. “Your smart tongue isn’t going to help you now. Maybe I should cut it out.”

Neil can’t say anything to that because he can’t breathe. By the time Riko lets him go his vision is swimming black and the gasp he takes when he’s released is more painful than being choked. He coughs through it and barely avoids the combined agony and choking risk of vomiting at the same time.

“You know,” he gasps, “I defended you. When I was asked if you were working for the wrong side I said you were an asshole but there was no way. I should have thrown you to the dogs.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Neil,” Riko says, faux-gentle. “There was nothing you could have done.”

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, the door closes. Then there’s the distinct sound of the lock engaging from the outside.

Neil spits out the blood in his mouth, then probes along his teeth for any gaps. Then he says, “How’s the prisoner life treating you, Moreau?”

“Better than it is you,” Jean replies coolly.

“Good point,” Neil says. He’s seeing double out of his one good eye, which isn’t a great sign. “Did you do something in particular to earn it?”

Jean ignores this. “He’s going to offer you your life in exchange for joining his squad. If I were you, I would accept that.”

Neil laughs. “Of course you would.”

Jean stands, walking across to the sink set in one corner. After a moment he returns with a glass of water and a blue surgical scrub cloth that he’s dampened. He’s not particularly gentle as he wipes the crusted blood off of Neil’s face, but it’s worth it to see double out of both eyes.

“Is it really worth dying for?” Jean asks quietly. “This country, this president - does it matter that much?”

“That’s not why,” Neil replies.

“Then why?”

Neil considers this for a moment. Half of it is that he cares too much about people he shouldn’t, but that’s not everything.

“I don’t want to be on the wrong side,” he says. “Black and white morality is bullshit, but I don’t wanna kill people for assholes either.”

“Eloquent.”

“I’m missing some blood, you’ll have to forgive me.”

“Of course.” Jean offers him the glass of water with a raised eyebrow, and then helps him drink it when he nods a yes.

“You know,” Neil says after he’s drunk his fill. “If you really wanted to help me, you could untie me and then give me that gun.”

“No I couldn’t,” Jean replies. “I’ve never had a choice about who I work for.”

He walks back over to his chair and takes it, this time with more of a slump. He pats the gun where it’s holstered at his hip. “It’s not loaded, anyway.”

 

* * *

 

The next time Riko comes in, he throws Jean two bullets before he leaves.

“One each,” Jean says once he’s gone, almost off-hand, but makes no move to make good on that.

 

* * *

 

“He’s gotten better at this,” Neil rasps sometime later. “I should be dead by now.”

“Probably.” Jean doesn’t look much better off than him, for all Riko hasn’t touched him. He’s pacing the far wall, tight-spined and leonine.

“You claustrophobic?”

Jean snorts. “No.”

Neil shifts and then hisses. It’s mostly surface damage, carefully applied, which is good for his long-term mobility if he somehow survives this. A year or so ago, he’d be broken down into pieces by now.

It’s not a great sign of how long this is going to take, though. Neil’s not exactly holding out hope that someone is going to burst in here to his rescue.

“He didn’t really kill them,” he slurs, “Right?”

“Who, your sniper friend? No,” Jean replies. “They got around us somehow - the house was empty when we arrived. That didn’t stop Riko from having it torched to the ground.”

Neil considers this. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

“I don’t blame you. I don’t get anything out of lying to you though.”

“I don’t know, I kind of think comforting me does something for you,” Neil replies, and then coughs. It hurts, a lot. “Why else would he leave you here and make you watch?”

 

* * *

 

Neil had kind of thought it was the sort of torture that psychopaths deal in - where the point is the pain of it, not any information you can get.

That’s why he’s surprised when Riko demands, “Where’s Kevin?”

He laughs. And laughs. Even when Riko slaps him open-palmed across the face and re-splits his lip it only muffles it a bit.

He doesn’t even give Riko what he’s thinking, which is _how the hell would I know?_ Instead, he says the same thing he’s been saying for a while now, which is, “Fuck you.”

 

* * *

 

He passes out at some point. When he comes to, Jean has untied him and has his head in his lap.

“That’s nice of you,” he says, maybe. Maybe not, because Jean just makes a vague humming sound like he has no idea what Neil just said. Or maybe it’s just pity instead.

Whatever. Neil’s not exactly in a place to turn pity away, at this point.

“‘S he actually expect you to kill yourself?” he asks eventually, slightly more intelligibly.

“Does it matter?” Jean asks.

“I’d bring up the weather instead, but,” he points vaguely at the wall with a heavy hand, “No windows.”

Jean huffs something that might be the cousin of a laugh.

“Don’t give him the satisfaction,” Neil tells him blurrily. “If he wants you dead, make him do it himself.”

“I’m not like you,” Jean replies, which isn’t even a little bit true.

“Offer’s still open, by the way,” Neil says. “You’ve untied me, just give me the gun. I won’t even need both bullets.”

That laugh again. “You couldn’t even hold it up, never mind shoot straight.”

 

* * *

 

And then, as psychopaths often do, Riko gets bored.

That doesn’t surprise Neil. He grew up with people like Riko. Also, he’s a little past caring. The only upside of his current state is that he isn’t tied up in that stupid chair anymore.

Riko is crouched over Neil, looming above him. Neil looks at his face rather than the red-slick blade in his hand.

“You aren’t going to tell me anything, are you,” Riko says. He’s been asking about Kevin, nothing else, just what Kevin knows, what Neil told Kevin, where Kevin went.

Neil wants to say _you could have come to that conclusion hours ago_ , but he says nothing instead. It’s more satisfying, and it hurts less.

“Disappointing,” Riko says.

Oh, wait, Neil does have some words. “You always talked too much.”

Neil is a little annoyed, honestly. Riko has barely done him any structural damage - his ribs don’t feel great, and he’s concussed three times over, but otherwise it’s mostly on his skin - but now he’s going to kill Neil. He could have at least made it so he was actually putting Neil out of his misery.

Of course, he isn’t going to _say_ that.

He just laughs, a dry cough of a thing, and says, “You’re still really bad at this.”

The blind rage on Riko’s face is satisfying. He replies through his teeth, “I’m still going to kill you.”

“No,” says another voice, quiet but unmissable. There’s only three of them in the room, after all. Neil can’t see straight, but he can feel Riko’s attention turn from him immediately.

“No?” he asks. He sounds delighted. Perversely so.

Jean, pinched and pale, doesn’t reply. His gun - not the only one in the room, Neil is willing to bet, but still the only one drawn - is held on Riko, and his hands are impressively still.

Riko drops the knife on the floor with a clatter, straightening and turning towards Jean. He steps close, enough that the muzzle butts up against his chest. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

His tone is confident, and with good reason. Neil and Jean’s little talks might have gotten Jean this far, but the only one who has ever really thought he could shoot Riko Moriyama in cold blood was him three minutes ago. By his expression, he’s realised that too.

“I don’t know whether to be irritated or impressed,” Riko says. “Who knew you had it in you?”

Then he backhands Jean across the face, quick and brutal. Jean staggers, and a instant later he’s on his knees, an arm twisted up behind his back, and the gun is in Riko’s free hand pressed to the back of Jean’s skull.

Neil thinks for a moment that that’s it. He’s going to lie here and watch Riko kill Jean, and he won’t be able to do anything even if he wants to. It would be a pretty good metaphor for Jean’s entire life - grand rebellions cut brutally short.

Instead, Jean slams the weight of his upper body back, throwing Riko off balance and sending them both tumbling backwards.

The gun skitters across the floor. It’s nothing short of a brawl, Riko’s speed and technique against Jean’s strength and skill, the two of them too familiar with each other to be anything besides brutal. They’re too evenly matched to make a single mistake.

Except - they’ve sparred dozens of times, probably. In the same way Kevin and Neil have, to the point where it’s almost boring if it isn’t all-out. The difference is that Kevin has never been afraid of Neil, or vice versa. Jean can’t say the same, and Neil can see that now, in this moment where Jean’s instinct to survive overtakes everything else.

Riko might not have been fighting to kill before, but Jean definitely wasn’t ever fighting to stay alive, either. It turns out that does make a difference.

Riko gets Jean in a hold for a second, but Jean fights his way out of it with a twist of brute force. Riko spills across the floor towards the gun, but Jean is on him again before he can get a hand on it.

Riko struggles under Jean’s greater weight, bucking wildly. Unfortunately, the moment of suspension of pain means Jean has a chance to think, and a chance to hesitate. Riko uses that to jerk a leg up and force Jean back with his foot, breaking the hold.

Riko’s expression has changed as he gets up - the amusement is gone now. Determination is in its place, and the smile hasn’t shifted. It looks frigid in the most literal sense.

“What do you think this is going to buy you?” he asks Jean. “You won’t win. I’m going to beat you, and then I’m going to tie you up and make you watch while I kill him, and then I’m going to hurt you until you beg me to kill you too. But I’m curious about what you think would happen if you did.”

“Maybe I just really want to kill you,” Jean replies flatly, and kicks him in the chest hard enough to send him stumbling backwards.

Riko comes back harder with a flurry of brutal punches, splitting Jean’s eyebrow. It begins to bleed badly. He pants, “I don’t think you do.”

Jean, staggering, pauses. Just for a moment. That’s all Riko needs, bulling Jean over onto his back and perching on his chest, knees pinning his arms down. Jean bucks but can’t quite get free like this.

“Or you do,” Riko says. His voice is shining victory again. Neil can see Jean’s desperate face as he struggles. “You do want to kill me. But, like I said, you aren’t going to win.”

Neil sees a flash of metal, and then hears the sick sound of a blade sliding home. For a moment, only able to see Jean’s surprised face, Neil thinks he’s the one with the knife in him. Then, Riko spasms.

Jean scrambles backwards on his ass, Riko falling away from him. The spasms don’t stop for a long moment, and when they do it’s with a puff of breath - a last exhalation.

The room is very, very quiet in the aftermath. The only movement is Jean, imitating a tremouring shadow of Riko, and blood spreading across the floor.

Jean’s hands are shaking badly, his eyes too wide. He looks like he’s on the brink of shock. He’d picked up the knife Riko dropped and used it without hesitation and - maybe, hopefully - saved both of their lives.

“Help me,” Neil orders, and is unsurprised when Jean does so. It takes longer than it should, but eventually Jean gets himself upright and then helps Neil off the ground. He grips Jean’s forearms tight in case the pain of it drops him back on his ass, but he keeps his feet with less trouble than he expected. “Are you alright?”

“No,” Jean replies, and then he begins to laugh hysterically.

Neil isn’t in great shape, but at least he’s mentally sound. That, or he’s full of adrenaline. He limps to the door and tests it, finding it unlocked, and then goes back to Jean. When he hoists Jean up with an arm over his shoulder, both of them grunt.

“You’re heavy,” Neil says through clenched teeth, his hands and arms burning.

“You’re bleeding,” Jean says dazedly, but at least he catches himself listing sideways before he pulls them both over. “I should-”

“We’re leaving.” It doesn’t pay to stick around the scene of a crime, even if Neil’s genetic material is all over it. “Come on.”

It’s impossible to say who gets who out of the basement and out of the building, but they do it even stumbling like a bizarre three-legged creature with a cell phone held in one hand. It’s Neil’s, left carelessly on the kitchen bench, and picked up by Jean at Neil’s request. He takes it once they’re in open air, powering it back on.

He’s unsurprised when it rings within moments of coming back to life. He knew someone would be watching.

Jean, at the end of his tether, sinks down onto the lawn. Neil goes down with him, but he doesn’t let the impact of his thankfully uninjured knees on the grass stop him from answering the call.

He’s half-expecting Renee at the other end, but it’s Kevin instead, voice precise with what Neil’s fuzzy brain translates as tension. “Neil?”

“It’s me,” Neil confirms.

“I’ve got a team travelling to your location right now,” he says. “Stay on the line. Talk to me.”

“About what?” His voice sounds kind of like his brain feels, now that he listens to it.

“Anything,” Kevin prompts, and then, “Is Jean with you?”

“Yeah.” Neil pats at the man in question distractedly, earning a flinch and a curse in French. “He’s alive, too.”

“Are either of you badly injured?”

Neil looks Jean over. He’s already coming up blue with bruises over his face, one eye swelling, but there’s no obvious bleeding besides the eyebrow cut. “He’s okay.”

“I said _either_ of you.” Picky bastard.

“I’m fine,” Neil says vaguely, mostly because he doesn’t want to look at himself. He’s definitely not fine.

Kevin sighs. “You’re alive. I’ll take it.”

 

* * *

 

The doctors are pretty reluctant to let him leave, but Neil thinks that has more to do with them wanting to transfer him for psychiatric treatment than his physical injuries. It’s a level of care for his mental health he’s never experienced, and he doesn’t trust it.

He doesn’t break out. That’s at least partly because Allison Reynolds sweeps in and sweeps him out along with her, folding him into the back of a black town car.

She gives him a long look once the car is moving. “You look fucking terrible.”

“It’s cosmetic,” Neil replies.

She raises an eyebrow. “Broken ribs, concussion, sprained ankle, burns, about one thousand stitches-”

“Mostly cosmetic,” Neil corrects himself.

“Well, I guess it’s better than what you are officially right now,” she muses, “Which is dead, if you were wondering.”

He waves a bandaged hand. “It’s not the first time.”

“You’ll have to start collecting your defunct death certificates,” she says. “Thanks for your service, by the way.”

“I’m not military,” he reminds her.

“So what? You saved the president’s life, and nearly died in the process of unravelling one of the largest cases of treason in living memory. As far as I’m aware, that counts as service.”

“Then you can thank me when it’s done.” That’s what they’re going to do right now - put all the pieces together, and make a plan. Neil doesn’t have the time to lie around in a hospital bed when the job isn’t finished.

They pull up at an unlikely-looking building which has a sign on the wall which says ‘Alex Kennedy Community Centre’ _._ The town car drops Allison and Neil off at the back entrance, where Neil ignores the arm Allison offers him and limps inside.

“No need to be all manly about it,” she scoffs at him.

“I don’t trust anyone wearing six inch heels,” Neil replies. She snorts.

The door leads down a dim hall, and then out into a large gym area. It’s empty - or, at least, mostly empty. Neil pauses when he realises there’s someone waiting in the roped off wrestling ring.

Allison doesn’t stop. “You’ve got five minutes. Don’t make me come back for you.” Then she lets herself out through the double doors on the far side of the room.

Neil walks up to the ring. “I’m not exactly up for a few rounds.”

Andrew doesn’t reply to this. He’s been motionless until now, leaning on the ropes, but he slips between them and onto the floor at the sound of Neil’s voice.

When the rescue party had arrived for him and Jean and turned out to be Renee, the cousins had been the first thing Neil asked after. It’s not a surprise to see Andrew here and whole, but it’s still such a relief that Neil feels his legs wobble a little.

As he looks Andrew over, Andrew is doing the same thing. There’s not much to see besides dozens of dressings over his deeper wounds. He’s going to scar, and badly so. His undercover days are pretty much over.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means for everything - for that impossible gunshot, for Eden’s Twilight, for the safehouse and for turning Andrew’s entire life upside down, for nearly getting killed.

“Shut up,” Andrew replies.

“Thank you,” Neil says instead, and again he means for everything. Including the gunshot.

“Shut the fuck up,” Andrew says, and kisses him.

Allison does have to come back for them, in the end.

The room through the double doors is full of familiar faces amongst the ones he doesn’t know. For a start, Aaron and Nicky are there, Aaron with an impressive black eye and Nicky holding a hand over his mouth at the sight of Neil. Dan Wilds is there, as is Matt Boyd. Jean. Renee, of course.

Kevin meets his eyes from across the room and nods.

Apparently they were waiting on Andrew and Neil, because they all gather closer and quiet down. Someone finds Neil a seat, which he takes gratefully. Andrew stays standing at Neil’s shoulder.

“Okay,” Renee says, and smiles, dark and light at the same time. “We need to move fast. Let’s get this done.”

 

* * *

 

The Director lives in an ultra-modern penthouse apartment with a very impressive security system. It’s decorated in a distinctly Japanese style, with pale bamboo flooring and a collection of screen room partitions that are likely more for safety purposes than anything else.

There’s a stunning view of the city from the panoramic window in the living room. However, when Tetsuji Moriyama turns the lights on, Neil is facing him, not the view.

Moriyama pauses, surprised and not quite quick enough to disguise it. “Nathaniel.”

“Director,” Neil replies. The furniture is more comfortable than it looks. “Seeing as we’re using our previous titles tonight.”

Moriyama doesn’t respond to that jab. “What do you want?”

“To kill you.” The gun resting in his lap is ready, safety off, finger on the trigger. “But apparently I’m not allowed to.”

“I’m surprised you were allowed to come here at all, then.”

“They know I’m good at following orders.”

Moriyama stumps over and takes a seat on the couch across from Neil. “I don’t suppose they know your new propensity for breaking protocol.”

Neil tilts his head, faux-thoughtful. “They know as well as you do that I only follow orders to a point. Or maybe you just didn’t realise that what applied with my father would also apply to you, in the end. Kind of stupid, really.”

Moriyama ignores this. “What are you here to do, then?”

“Detain you, probably.” He shrugs. “Ask you some questions.”

The stiffening in the other man’s shoulders is almost imperceptible, but not quite. Neil smiles. “I’ll keep my hands to myself. You should know that I don’t do that anymore anyway.”

The look that earns is frigid. Moriyama doesn’t speak.

“I’m curious,” Neil says. “I know why you targeted me - it was easy for you. You knew I’d break, and that would give you an excuse to have me terminated. Or maybe you just really did think those times you tried to have me killed would work. But why Kevin?”

Because Kevin is, for all his faults, a shining example of the Agency’s purpose - maintaining the checks and the balances where possible, walking into the morally grey areas for the good of the people, ready to willingly sacrifice himself for any one stranger. He is undoubtedly the best of them. Neil has never stopped believing that for a second.

“He doesn’t have what it takes,” Moriyama says. “You, of all people, should understand that.”

And the thing is - Neil knows what he means. Neil has ‘what it takes’. He’s killed, cold-blooded, and done a hell of a lot worse into the bargain.

“No,” he says. “ _I_ don’t have what it takes. The Agency isn’t here to do the immoral dirty work no one else will. It’s here to make things safe, even if the cost is high. So you and I, we’re the people who shouldn’t be anywhere near it. Kevin should be.”

“And you and I? What should we do?”

“So far, you’ve been the one playing chessmaster, and I’ve been a janitor. But we’re going to try to be better,” Neil replies, then tilts his head like he’s thinking hard. “Well, I will. You’re going to be at the bottom of a deep, dark pit in a prison somewhere.”

“You sound pleased about that,” Moriyama notes. “Is that you being better?”

“Definitely not,” Neil says. “But that’s why I said ‘try’.”

There’s a knock at the door, and it opens without pause. When Renee enters the room she has her weapon drawn, though she doesn’t look particularly surprised by the peaceful tableau they enter into.

“Tetsuji Moriyama,” Renee says. Her usual smile is gone, and her eyes are hard as stone. She doesn’t say anything else.

“You aren’t going to read me my Miranda Rights?” Moriyama asks, staring back at her.

“I’m not a cop,” Renee replies. “Get up.”

“Fight if you want,” Neil comments. “It’ll be funny.”

He doesn’t fight. Renee handcuffs him easily and then searches him slickly for weapons. He doesn’t have a single one on him, which illustrates the difference between them better than anything else could.

Moriyama has thought himself untouchable, all this time. He was born of a crime family and ended up in a position of incredible power, which he then twisted to suit his own ends. Neil isn’t a paperwork man, but he’s seen enough of it in the last six hours to know it’s nearly impossible to see where the Agency begins and the Moriyama dynasty ends.

It explains a lot about Riko, certainly.

Neil pushes himself up and holsters his handgun. He’s wearing a wire under his shirt, not that they really need it. He pulls it out and turns it off.

Moriyama watches him do it. “It’s not just me. It never was.”

“I’m well aware you’ve got your claws all through everything,” Neil replies. “It’ll be hard work to dig them all out, but we’ll get it done. We already started with the biggest prick.”

He grins. It hurts his barely-beginning-to-heal cheeks and it’s absolutely worth it for the too-calm expression on Moriyama’s face tremoring.

He demands, “Where is my nephew?”

 

* * *

 

Neil’s whole life has been secrecy, so standing in front of a panel of powerful people and answering questions about his past is incredibly alien. It’s a closed meeting, but it’s still the largest number of living people who have ever known the truth about him.

The satisfaction of seeing Tetsuji found guilty of treason and conspiring to assassinate the president is worth spilling his secrets, though.

Allison meets him in the lobby of the building afterwards, sleekly dressed with sunglasses perched on her hair. She hands another pair to Neil. “The press are outside. The only things you should say are ‘no comment’ and ‘excuse me’.”

“Not ‘get the fuck out of my way’?” Neil accepts the glasses, putting them on.

Allison shrugs. “If you want to make some stimulating headlines, be my guest.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” With that, he pushes through the main doors and into a crush of people and phones and cameras. Allison follows, her height and take-no-prisoners aura work instantly to his advantage. Together, they push through the crowd towards the curb.

Neil drove and parked in a building a block down, but when he makes it to the curb there’s a sleek SUV with blacked-out windows waiting there. Neil has a split second to assume it’s Allison’s doing before he feels her pause behind him.

The rear door opens, and he has to put a hand to the roof to stop himself being carried straight into the car by momentum.

“Neil,” says the man sitting in the car, dressed in an expensive dark suit. “Come in.”

Ichirou looks very much like his brother in some ways, and very different in others. Neil spares a moment to squeeze Allison’s wrist, ignoring her muffled protest, before he slips into the car and closes the door behind himself.

The car pulls out into traffic, gliding away. Neil takes a silent moment to examine the driver and definitely-a-security-guard in the front seat, and then Ichirou himself. The man is all tightly-controlled power, his face difficult to read.

“Thanks for the ride,” Neil drawls, because this is a dangerous man, but not a stupid one. If he was going to kill Neil, he wouldn’t have picked him up off of the steps of a government building.

Ichirou gives him a slow look over. “So, my uncle has been found guilty.”

“There was a considerable amount of evidence against him,” Neil says. Hidden, yes, but if you knew where to look you could find it. The Agency servers had been torn apart by insiders who knew how to coax the secrets out, even the ones purposely hidden from them.

“And you’ve gone public. How long do you think it will be before ‘Neil Josten’ is unravelled completely and everyone knows about Nathaniel Wesninski?”

“It depends how determined they are,” Neil replies. He doesn’t love the idea of it, but he’s not afraid and not ashamed. The worst of it - what Neil did on his father’s orders - isn’t recorded anywhere anyway. “I’m not that interesting. Not by comparison.”

“You killed your own father.”

“No one is going to consider that a great loss. Besides your late father.” Neil leans back. “I’d assumed you killed him, actually.”

Ichirou doesn’t react, but the driver and the security guard do. Apparently it’s rude to accuse a man of patricide.

“His health failed him, unfortunately,” Ichirou corrects easily enough.

“So now you’re the king.”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you share the family interest in political meddling?” Neil asks, because he could talk around the question all day but he has a feeling Ichirou values straightforwardness.

“Tetsuji and Riko share the name but they’re of a lesser branch,” Ichirou replies, as though he isn’t talking about his own brother and uncle. “So, in answer to your question, only in the way that all rich men are. I’m sure you understand that that’s the way of the world.”

“Sure. Capitalism is the scourge of democracy,” Neil says. “I guess my real question is, do I have to stop you from trying to seize control of the Agency like your uncle did?”

Ichirou gives him a long look. He doesn’t have his brother’s temper, that’s for certain - he almost seems amused. “I’m not interested in a half-dissected government organisation that deals in terrorism and assassination.”

“Of course not.” Well, Ichirou probably doesn’t need to rely on the government for his contract killings.

“My father was the one who thought America would be a suitable place to grow the family business,” Ichirou says, apropos of nothing. “He was right, of course. But now I have to look to the future. I’m not sure how much more growth the US can offer us.”

Neil doesn’t say that if Ichirou decides to move the ‘family business’ back to Japan, he’ll make the trip to the airport to wave them off. “That’s interesting.”

Ichirou smiles, just a touch. It doesn’t warm his expression at all. “You’re an interesting man, Nathaniel. All this trouble, and you’re still itching for a fight - for what?”

“It’s not about fighting,” Neil says. “It’s about not leaving a job half-done.”

“I can understand that,” Ichirou replies. The car slows and pulls up to park, fortuitously outside Neil’s apartment building and not at an abandoned building site. “Congratulations.”

Neil pauses in reaching for the door handle. “For what?”

“You and your friends ended a significant threat to the country.” Ichirou says.

“We also killed your brother,” Neil reminds him, and then internally curses.

“He was a pawn with my name,” Ichirou replies. “No great loss.”

Well then. Neil continues his reach to the door, opening it. He says again, “Thank you for the ride.”

“You’re welcome,” Ichirou says, and as soon as Neil has shut the door the car pulls out again.

Neil exhales. He gives himself a moment to hope this is the last encounter he ever has with someone with the surname Moriyama, and then he goes inside.

 

 


	4. CENTRE

 

 

The Agency has a new leader within the week. Neil and Andrew only know about it because said leader tracks them down to tell them.

Kevin looks tired, but satisfied. He takes the coffee Neil hands him and says, “I’ve still got two job positions open.”

Andrew looks utterly unmoved by this, but his focus does shift from Kevin to Neil. Neil considers the two of them in turn: Andrew in his perch at Neil’s breakfast bar, sweater pulled past his knuckles and the hollows under his eyes, and Kevin, his designer suit and the shoulder holster underneath it, the officious exterior over a lethal interior symbolic of the man himself.

“I’m retiring,” Neil tells them both. “I’ve had enough.”

“You’re a way off of retirement age,” Kevin points out, though his tone is easy.

“I’ve been doing this since I was a kid,” Neil says. “I don’t want to die doing it. Not anymore.”

He never really did want to die for it, but before he understood it as a necessary cost. Now, he wants to be better. Or he just wants better than that. He does, at least, have time to figure out which it is.

“I understand,” Kevin says. “I hope you understand if I ask you to stay on as a consultant, though. Not least because then you’ll be able to maintain your security clearance.”

“Does that mean you’ll still want to talk to me?” Neil asks, which earns him an eyeroll. “Don’t worry, I know you’re relieved because you don’t have to be the one to tell me that my undercover days are over.”

“I’ll let you know if we need a secretary.” Kevin’s attention turns to Andrew. “And you?”

“What’s your employment package like?” Andrew asks in return.

“Better than that nightclub,” Kevin replies immediately.

Andrew tilts his head. His expression is still bland, but there’s an intensity in his gaze. “You’re not selling it.”

Kevin smirks. “I already know you aren’t going to take it. I’m not interesting in wasting my energy.”

“So you  _ can _ learn,” Andrew says, and salutes him before returning his focus to his own mug of coffee.

Neil watches him, feeling his own mouth quirking up a little bit, and then looks to Kevin. “You’ve cleaned house?”

“From the top down,” Kevin confirms. “Not doing it would have been like sleeping on top of a scorpion’s nest.”

“I’m sure that was cathartic.”

That earns a smile. “You have no idea.”

“So,” Neil asks, “Now what?”

Kevin seems to consider this, staring down at his mug. Then he says, “We do better than we did before.”

“I see all those strategy meetings weren’t wasted on you,” Neil observes, though he is smiling just a little.

“I wouldn’t want to tell you more, now that you’re retired,” Kevin replies good-naturedly.

“Don’t get killed now I’m not there to watch your back.” That’s the only thing that had made Neil seriously consider sticking with the Agency.

“Anyone who wants to kill me is going to have to try a lot harder now I’m basically a desk jockey.”

“True,” Neil concedes. Also, they would have to go through Renee and Jean first, which is more comforting.

Kevin looks at him, really looks at him, for a long moment. “And what are you going to do now?”

And Neil thinks of the big things - the possibilities of what he could achieve, his whole life laid out before him. He could go back to school, or take up a trade, or become a cashier at a grocery store. And the little things, too: he could have hobbies, take up a sport or get into an art. All those things he never even considered before when his life was surviving, and running, and fighting.

Or he could stay right here, in this apartment, with Andrew at his side. Andrew, who is looking out the window, face still but relaxed, half-listening but unbothered by it all, and by who Neil is and was.

“You know,” Neil tells Kevin, “I think I’ll figure something out.”


End file.
